The American continent was considered a new world to the European Powers which had seen it as a new land since Amerigo Vespucci published his work "Mundus Novus and the Letter to Soderini" between 1503 and 1505 in which he demostrated that what had been considerd the "West Indies" was in fact a continent which became a new land to the European Knowledge. This continent took the name of "America" in honor to Vespucci. Since then it was known as the "new land" because a vast portion of it remained unexplored. As the colonization and exploring of these new lands were extremely dangerous tasks, the European empires which had invested men and resources on it, decided to send pernicious prisioners, sentenced to death, Mentally ill and bankrupt people to explore and colonize these territories with the promise of owning land.
So for empires like Spain, Portugal, Flanders, England, France and Italy acknowledged this continent as the "new world" and the term might had taken as an offense by people in the reigning elite, courtiers, rich merchants and anyone linked with the royalty who might seen in this term an offense by the fact of beign related with this class of people sent to the Americas and the belief that the population of this "new land" was composed by monsters and a large range catalogue of unknown creatures.
