Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454 – February 22, 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer who first demonstrated that Brazil and the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern outskirts as initially conjectured from Columbus' voyages (noob Columbus), but instead constituted an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to people of the Old World.
Colloquially referred to as the New World, this second super continent came to be termed "Americas", deriving its name from Americus, the Latin version of Vespucci's first name.
Some have suggested that Vespucci, in the two letters published in his lifetime, was exaggerating his role and constructed deliberate fabrications. However, many scholars now believe that the two letters were not written by him but were fabrications by others based in part on genuine letters by Vespucci. It was the publication and widespread circulation of the letters that might have led Waldseemüller to name the new continent America on his world map of 1507 in Lorraine.
Vespucci used a Latinised form of his name, Americus Vespucius, in his Latin writings, which Waldseemüller used as a base for the new name, taking the feminine form America, according to the prevalent view.
The book accompanying the map stated:
"I do not see what right any one would have to object to calling this part, after Americus who discovered it and who is a man of intelligence, Amerige, that is, the Land of Americus, or America:
since both Europa and Asia got their names from women".
It is possible that Vespucci was not aware that Waldseemüller had named the continent after him.
The two disputed letters claim that Vespucci made four voyages to America, while at most two can be verified from other sources.
At the moment, there is a dispute between historians on when Vespucci visited the mainland the first time.
Some historians like Germán Arciniegas and Gabriel Camargo Pérez think that his first voyage was made in June 1497 with the Spanish Pilot Juan de la Cosa.
Vespucci's real historical importance may well rest more in his letters, whether he wrote them all or not, than in his discoveries.
From these letters, the European public learned about the newly discovered continents of the Americas for the first time; its existence became generally known throughout Europe within a few years of the letters' publication.
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Summary: Amerigus was 15th century's Johnny Falcon.
