Vespucci, Amerigo

A Florentine navigator and merchant, born 1454, died 1512, whose name was applied to the Americas. Sailing for Spain and then Portugal around 1499 to 1502, he explored the coast of South America and argued in published letters such as Mundus Novus that these lands were a new continent, not the eastern edge of Asia as Columbus held. In 1507 the cartographer Martin Waldseemueller labeled the new land America after the Latin form of his first name, Americus. In 1508 Spain made Vespucci its first piloto mayor.