Amerigo Vespucci is born in Florence, Italy. He’ll give his name to two continents.
Vespucci worked in Seville, Spain, at the time of Christopher Columbus. Not content to sit on the sidelines when fame and fortune awaited, he outfitted his own expeditions to seek a short trade route to India. On his second voyage to what we now call South America, Vespucci made a major breakthrough. He went south along the eastern coast and then farther south. He was off Patagonia, within four hundred miles of Tierra del Fuego, and the coast was like nothing previously known to Europeans. Vespucci was convinced it wasn’t Asia, but a new continent.
He made more voyages to what was soon called the New World. A popular account appeared in a pamphlet, “The Four Voyages of Amerigo.” It achieved widespread circulation, thanks to the growth of a relatively new technology, the printing press.
German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller reissued the pamphlet in 1507 with an introduction that suggested “calling this part… America, after Amerigo.” Waldseemüller included a map on which the name America makes its earliest appearance. The map was popular. The name caught on, and it spread. Gerardus Mercator’s 1538 world map included both North and South America.
Though Vespucci reached America after Columbus (and others), it’s not unjust that two continents are named in his honor. He seems to have originated the idea that the new lands were not merely offshore islands of Asia. He reorganized the data, he shifted the paradigm, and he deserves the eponym.
We do not often refer to the New World as Columbia. Nor do we call it Ericsonia or Cabotland. Nor is our nation’s name (and we should be grateful for this) Waldseemüller or the United States of Vespucci.—RA