Which explorer gave the Pacific Ocean its name after finding calm waters in 1520?

Ferdinand Magellan gave the Pacific Ocean its name after encountering relatively calm waters in 1520.

Magellan’s expedition reached the ocean after navigating the hazardous strait at the southern tip of South America, now called the Strait of Magellan. Compared with the storms and rough seas they had just crossed, the waters beyond appeared peaceful, prompting Magellan to call it Mar Pacífico, meaning “peaceful sea” or “pacific sea.”

The naming story is connected to Magellan’s expedition, but he was not the first European to see the Pacific from the Americas. In 1513, the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and named the ocean he saw Mar del Sur, or “South Sea.”

Magellan’s fleet became the first recorded expedition to cross the Pacific, reaching the Philippines in 1521. Magellan himself died there, and Juan Sebastián Elcano later led the surviving expedition back to Spain in 1522, completing the first circumnavigation of Earth. The ocean was also sometimes called the Sea of Magellan until the eighteenth century.