Christopher Columbus famously sailed the ocean blue in 1492, so why isn't the New World named after him?
The answer has to do with Columbus' reputation at the time Europeans named the newfound continents, as well as a highly successful publicity campaign led by the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, said Matt Crawford, an associate professor of history at Kent State University in Ohio.
In addition, Columbus maintained until his dying day that the new land he had discovered was, in fact, Asia, Crawford said. In contrast, Vespucci was one of the first, if not the first explorer to declare that the New World was an entirely newfound entity (at least to the Europeans)
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