Colombia is the South American country named after Christopher Columbus.
The name Colombia comes from “Colombia,” a term derived from Columbus’s name. The revolutionary Francisco de Miranda used the word for a proposed independent American state, and Simón Bolívar later applied it to Gran Colombia, a republic created in 1819.
Gran Colombia originally joined territories corresponding broadly to modern Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama. It dissolved during the early 1830s, but the name remained associated with Colombia, which adopted its current form after the political changes of that period.
Colombia occupies the continent’s northwestern corner and is the only South American country with coastlines on both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Its name is not derived from an Indigenous language or a geographic feature.