I believe that it was Amerigo Vespushi (spelling), that founded America.however, how did America get its name?

Question

I believe that was his name ~ please correct me if I am wrong....thanks. I need a history teacher on this one.

Answer 1

Amerigo Vespucci first sailed to the New World in 1499 (after Columbus). He explored the West Indies and mapped the shorelines of South America, never touching North America at all.

The Italian mapmakers of the day named the continents for him because (1) he was Italian and (2) he was the first of the explorers to insist that the new continents were not part of Asia.

Answer 2

Amerigos Vespucci was an Italian navigator and he was the first to declare, rightfully so, after exploring the Americas himself, that Columbus had discovered a new continent and not some most eastern part of the Far East. A German cartographer heard of this and in his map making assigned the name "Amerigus" to the new continent. Later English translations changed it to America. Columbus, to his last dying breath, had always believed he found the Far East. You are not wrong.

Answer 3

The story I was taught was that Amerigo Vespuci was a travelling companion of Christopher Columbus. When Columbus discovered America he thought so much of Amerigo that he named the new land after his friend Amerigo calling it America.

Answer 4

True, he´s the guy that inspired the map.
In 1499 he came to America (continent) and explored the Amazon, in 1501 he came back (this time in a portuguese ship). He wrote back and told his stories, these letters circulated all through Europe...
he was the first to identify the new continent, everyone else thought they were still in Asia.
Anyway, these other guy, a mapmaker, Waldseemuller , inspired by Amerigo´s tale created a map (Carta Mariana) and oh! we have a name!
Ta da!

Answer 5

Amerigo Vespushi mapped the Caribbean and Latin American coasts, but he was around 500 years late when compared to the Vikings who arrived around 1000 AD.

Answer 6

Just to break up the consensus:
consider the case for Bristol Customs Officer Richard Amerike (c. 1445-1503)
" who was a wealthy English merchant of Welsh descent who funded John Cabot's voyage of discovery to North America in 1497.

Amerike's connection with the Americas' name surfaced in the 1890s, when the 1497 and 1498 customs rolls, archived in Westminster Abbey, were found to contain his name in connection with the payment of John Cabot's pension.

John Cabot (originally Giovanni Caboto, a Venetian seaman) had become a well known mariner in England, and he came to Bristol in 1495 looking for investment in a new project. On March 5, 1496, Cabot received a letter of authority from King Henry VII to make a voyage of discovery and claim lands on behalf of the monarch. It is believed that Amerike may have been one of the principal investors in the building of Cabot's ship, the Matthew.

Cabot is known to have produced maps of the coast from Maine to Newfoundland, though none have survived. He named an island off Newfoundland St. John's. Copies of these maps were sent to Spain by John Day, where Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci would have seen them. The theory suggests that Cabot may have written the name America (or similar) on his maps, but no extant maps are available to prove this assertion.

Vespucci sailed to South America and the Caribbean with Alonso de Ojeda (Hojeda) in 1499 and Gonçalo Coelho in 1501 and became convinced that these were new lands, not Asia as Columbus believed. Martin Waldseemüller, a German map-maker, published a world map in 1507 using Vespucci's previously published letters. The theory suggests that Waldseemüller assumed that the "America" that Vespucci used was derived from his first name. Waldseemüller provided an explanation of this assumption as an attachment to the map. Vespucci himself never stated that this was the case.
There were immediate protests from Columbus' supporters to get the continent renamed for Columbus, but attempts were unsuccessful, since 1,000 copies of the map were already in circulation. On later editions of the map he substituted the words "Terra Incognita," but it was too late; the name America was now firmly associated with the entire northern and southern continent across the Atlantic from Europe."

If the continent *was* named after Amerigo Vespucci, he would have used his surname, and it would be Vespuccia or similar!
Hence the claim for "Columbus" not "Christophoria".

Answer 7

Yep,it was named after Amerigo Vespucci. Good thing to! The alternative would have been Columbia, after that guy Christopher! The guy who set out not knowing where he was going, no idea how to get there, and when he got there, not having any idea where he was! Theres a big statue of him in Barcelona, standing on a high plinth, pointing west, and presumably saying "India lies that way!"

Answer 8

Wow! Pedestal42's answer is the first I've heard that theory.
I'm going to look that one up - I like it!
If true, it sure makes sense! I was always under the assumption that the Continents were named for Vespucci who first mapped the Hemisphere circa 1499-1501.

Answer 9

Answer #1 is 100% correct!

Answer 10

"Amerigo" is close to "Americo" or "America". :)