Who was Amerigo Vespucci?

There are no movies about Amerigo Vespucci for whom our country is named after. You won't find any statues commemorating his greatness in any American town square, capital building or place of distinction. There are no bridges, highways, waterways, districts or notable landmarks in his honor. No federal holiday celebrates the greatness of his name or his seafaring abilities. It is almost as if he did not exist. And yet his name is lent to our country, two continents and countless corporations. Are the great United States of America named after a phantom?

Who was this explorer and how did our country come to be named after him? Vespucci was born on March 9, 1454 in Florence Italy, one of the most influential cities in renaissance Italy and the world itself. He worked for the powerful de'Medici family and eventually purchased a merchant ship supply company in Seville, Spain which was the heart of the Spanish naval empire.

Having heard off Columbus's voyages and success, Vespucci quickly used his influence and sought to work closely on Columbus's next voyages. Vespucci assisted Columbus with his second and third voyages to the New World. Little did Columbus realize that his greatest discovery would yield naming rights to this Florentine named Amerigo. But Vespucci is credited in his accounts of the voyages in realizing that the newly discovered lands were not part of Asia as Columbus had thought, but a new fourth continent. Up until that time in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, there were believed to be only three main continents of Europe, Africa and Asia.

Did Vespucci position himself to be the right person at the right time in history to get credit for this new discovery or was it just blind luck? Whatever the case, a popular German geographer of the time, Martin Waldseemuller, read Vespucci's accounts and concluded he was correct in his assessments. Waldseemuller was assisted by a schoolmaster named Mathias Ringmann who served as editor for their newly researched work titled "Cosmographiae Introductio" which according to Archiving Early America was published in 1507. Ringmann summarized by saying, "There is a fourth quarter of the world which Amerigo Vespucci has discovered and which for this reason we can call 'America' or the land of Americo." This was the first time the word America was ever printed for all to see, and the rest is history, albeit misunderstood history.

What's in a name anyways? Superman could be "fighting a never ending battle for truth, justice and the Columbian Way," if it were not for a couple of obscure German researchers who cared enough about what our world really looked like, but failed to do their homework and qualify the work of other explorers who paved the way for Amerigo Vespucci's observations.

Source:

http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/bookmarks/americas_name/