The naming of the Americas is a weird and wonderful combination that involves the tales of two men - one who thought he had been where he wasn't, and one who appears not to have gone everywhere he claimed.

Everyone is familiar with the story of how Christopher Columbus, convinced that the world was round (and the rest of the world convinced he was crazy), sailed westward in 1492 to seek out the exotic land called India.

What he discovered was actually an island he named San Salvadore. Right up to his death in 1506, Columbus would remain convinced he had discovered India. Even a second voyage to the same area, would not change his mind.

Following in the wake of his ships, was a cartographer from Italy, named Amerigo Vespucci. Not a captain in his own right, he sailed with other explorers, charting stars and recording landmarks. His fame, and "accomplishments" were largely drawn from two letters that were widely circulated in Europe after his death. It is these letters that introduce the true Americas to the civilized world.

But were they really his letters? And had he really done what was in them? The two missives, titled Mundus Novus (New World) and Lettera (The Four Voyages), are now suspected by experts to be forgeries by someone else of the same period. There is no evidence at all, that Vespucci sailed anywhere in 1497. He did however, make two journeys in 1499 and 1501, in which he would lay out the coastline of North Carolina. The last voyage he is reported to have made was in 1503. But there is next to no information on that one, either.

Regardless of the current doubt on his honesty, the letters resulted in a world cartographer drawing on Vespucci's first name for the new land he had charted. Since all other continents were feminine, in 1507, the new map would list a country called "America".