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Amerigo Vespucci (/ v ɛ ˈ s p uː tʃ i / vesp-OO-chee, [1] Italian: [ameˈriːɡo veˈsputtʃi]; 9 March 1454 – 22 February 1512) was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Florence for whom "America" is named.
Vespucci wrote the “Letter from Seville” in Seville, Spain after finishing his voyage in order to summarize all his discoveries in South America. Vespucci was satisfied with the voyage because he crossed the equator successfully and explored the tropics, which were called the Torrid Zone at that time, and investigated rivers and different ...
The book includes the reason for using the name America in the wall map and the globe, and contains a Latin translation of the four journeys of Amerigo Vespucci as an appendix. The full title of the book is: Cosmographiae introductio cum quibusdam geometriae ac astronomiae principiis ad eam rem necessariis. Insuper quatuor Americi Vespucii ...
"America" derives from Americus, the Latin version of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci's first name. The feminine form America was originally used to refer to the newly discovered continent, which is why it was accorded with the feminine names of the other continents: Asia, Africa, and Europa. [16]
Historia antipodum oder newe Welt, or History of the New World, by Matthäus Merian the Elder, published in 1631. The Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci is usually credited for coming up with the term "New World" (Mundus Novus) for the Americas in his 1503 letter, giving it its popular cachet, although similar terms had been used and applied before him.
Ringmann may have been misled into crediting Vespucci by the widely published Soderini Letter, a sensationalized version of one of Vespucci's actual letters reporting on the mapping of the South American coast, which glamorized his discoveries and implied that he had recognized that South America was a continent separate from Asia. [19]
The name America is placed on South America on the main map. As explained in Cosmographiae Introductio, the name was bestowed in honor of the Italian Amerigo Vespucci. The map is drafted on a modification of Ptolemy's second projection, expanded to accommodate the Americas and the high latitudes. [2]
The earliest known use of the name "America" dates to 1505, when German poet Matthias Ringmann used it in a poem about the New World. [2] The word is a Latinized form of the first name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who first proposed that the West Indies discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 were part of a previously unknown landmass, rather than the eastern limit of Asia.