Vespucci's own claims about the timing and nature of his voyages remain disputed by historians, but his widely circulated letters describing lands beyond Europe's imagination convinced cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to label the new continents 'America' on his 1507 map. The lasting irony: Vespucci, not Columbus, gave his name to two continents, largely through better publicity rather than clearer priority of discovery.
Vespucci was a Florentine merchant working for the Medici family before he turned to exploration in his forties, considerably older than most contemporaries setting off across the Atlantic. His letters, published and republished across Europe, described the southern continent as a genuinely 'New World'—mundus novus—distinct from Asia, a conceptual leap Columbus himself never fully made, since Columbus died insisting he had reached the outskirts of Asia.
Historians have long argued over whether Vespucci actually made a 1497 voyage before his documented 1499 expedition, since the evidence rests almost entirely on his own letters, some possibly embellished or ghostwritten for popular consumption.
Regardless of the precise chronology, the impact of his publicized accounts was undeniable. German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, working from Vespucci's popular narratives, printed a world map in 1507 labeling the southern landmass 'America,' a name that stuck and eventually extended to the entire double continent, immortalizing a Florentine merchant's name over that of the Genoese admiral who sailed first.
Key people: Amerigo Vespucci