Which explorer is credited with giving the Amazon River its European name after a 1541 expedition?

Francisco de Orellana is credited with giving the Amazon River its European name after his 1541 expedition.

Orellana was a Spanish explorer who joined Gonzalo Pizarro’s expedition in search of the fabled land of cinnamon and other riches east of the Andes. After separating from Pizarro’s main force, Orellana and his companions travelled down a great river, eventually reaching the Atlantic Ocean in 1542.

Accounts of the journey described encounters with Indigenous communities and fighting involving women warriors, which the expedition compared with the Amazons of Greek mythology. That comparison helped produce the river’s European name, although the exact details of the encounters remain debated by historians.

The naming story does not mean that the river had no earlier Indigenous names. Amazonian peoples had their own names and geographic knowledge for the river and its tributaries long before European exploration. Orellana’s expedition was one episode in a much older human history.