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  The Americas were named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci explored South America between 1497 and 1502, and was the first European to suggest that the Americas represented a landmass not then known to the Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller published a world map, and placed the word "America" on the continent of present-day South America. The continent north of present-day Mexico was then referred to as Parias. On a 1553 world map published by Petrus Apianus, North America was called "Baccalearum", meaning "realm of the Cod fish", in reference to the abundance of cod fish on the East Coast.
  
  Waldseemüller used the Latin version of Vespucci's name, Americus Vespucius, in its feminine form of "America", following the examples of "Europa", "Asia", and "Africa". Map makers later extended the name America to North America.
  
  In 1538, Gerardus Mercator used the term America on his world map of the entire Western Hemisphere. On his subsequent 1569 map, Mercator called North America "America or New India" (America sive India Nova).
  
  The Spanish Empire called its territories in North and South America "Las Indias", and the name given to the state body that oversaw the region was called the Council of the Indies.