Amerigo Vespucci
Americas' Italian namesake
Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian explorer and navigator whose voyages to the Americas in the late 1490s and early 1500s led him to recognize that the lands Columbus had reached were not Asia but a separate continent.
The German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller named this "New World" America in his honor in 1507.
Vespucci's name thus marks two continents he never ruled or conquered—an accident of mapmaking that has puzzled schoolchildren ever since.
- Latin nameFormal species designation
- FlorentineOf a Renaissance city
- Medici familyFlorentine banking dynasty
- explorerOne who investigates unfamiliar regions
- lettersAlphabetic characters or mail
Vasco da Gama · Ferdinand Magellan · Age of Discovery · cartographer · Brazil · Italian · naming · voyages · sea voyage · New World · nautical charts · sailor · tall ship · Columbus · compass · navigator · Marco Polo · ships
- ExplorersColumbus, Christopher Columbus, Magellan, Cortez, Marco Polo
- Italian IconsLeonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dante, Galileo, Marco Polo
- seafarerssailor, seaman, mariner, able seaman, merchant seaman
- 15th Century FiguresChristopher Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Gutenberg, Joan of Arc, Isabella I
- Ancient ExplorersMarco Polo, Leif Erikson, Erik the Red, Christopher Columbus, Columbus
- FlorenceArno, Medici, Renaissance, Michelangelo, David
Amerigo VespucciHernán Cortés
conquistadors · conquerors · empire builders · colonizers · men of action
America, American, Americans, Americana, Americanize, Americanized, Americanizing, Americanization, South American