No. They are different places.

Contrary to popular belief, Latin America was not settled by the ancient Latins. Rather, centuries before, the Latins were conquered by the ancient Romans. The Romans were evil bastards, killed all the Latins, and stole their language.

Many moons later, the Europeans stole the Latin language from the dead Romans. [ * Side note: The Roman Empire actually fell because they didn't have a character to represent zero {0}, and hence, none of their C programs would properly terminate. They ran into resource problems, and the Empire crashed. * ]

Anyways, back to the Europeans... They crossed the Atlantic Ocean [ so named for the ancient Atlanteans that used to live there... a really long story about that... ] and sailed to a place we now call "Latin America".

Well, how did it get that name? The native inhabitants didn't really know their geography or much else for that matter, and they confused the Europeans with the ancient Latins, because the Europeans had stolen the Latin language.

So, the sinister Europeans, under the guidance of Darth America, did what they always did: kill, slaughter, maim, injure, pontificate about which order to do them in, etc. Hence, they conquered the natives much like the Romans did to the ancient Latins.

Well, the poor natives, confused about the real identity of the sinister Europeans, sarcastically referred to their home as "Latin America". That's because their grammar rules put possessive adjectives after nouns.

Some rumors support the theory that they originally wanted to call it "Lativian America", but that "Latvia" and "Latvian" was too similar and would cause further confusion. Those drunken scholars have since been executed.

Since "Latin America" was war torn and all-in-all a bloody mess, the poor inhabitants fled the evil Darth America and went South to the new promised land of beer and nachos. The land was named in honor of the escape from Darth America, and originally named "South from America", but later shortened to "South America".

And so, now if anyone asks you, you can tell them the real story about Latin and South America. We'll leave the story about North America for another day.

Peace out!

WOW... this is History, and not Geography 

Bluefrog.. what was your occupation b4 being an "IT marketing manager" , I can guess