History UsefulNotes / AmerigoVespucci

[[AsYouKnow As you can easily note]], he's the man UsefulNotes/TheAmericas (UsefulNotes/{{North|America}} and UsefulNotes/{{South|America}}) are named after, although the exact circumstances and merits for this are a truly complicated topic as only the Age of Exploration can produce. To sum up, [[WhamLine the reason of the name might be the greatest case of fake news in history]], the result of a series of written claims published in UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} which Vespucci himself might have not been even involved with. Indeed, it's even unknown whether this man ever learned during his lifetime that his name was being attached to entire continents, not to mention that it would become their ''permanent'' name in the history of mankind.

Vespucci was the heir of a rich but decadent merchant family from UsefulNotes/{{Florence}} in UsefulNotes/TheCityStateEra of UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance. A cultured young man with a crave for exploration, he started working for the Medici and was put in charge of their business in Castile, where UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs were busy conquering Granada. He befriended UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus and participated as a backer for his first three expeditions, and afterwards Amerigo himself embarked in another expedition to the lands now known as UsefulNotes/{{Venezuela}} under UsefulNotes/AlonsoDeOjeda in 1499. He was reportedly the one to name them, observing the native shacks built on water and comparing them to the city of Venice, thus calling them ''Venezzuela'' ("Little Venice"). Upon his return, Vespucci moved briefly to Portugal by unknown reasons: some claim he was working as a Spanish spy, others think the Spaniards kicked him away because they didn't trust him, and other believe the King of Portugal simply paid better. In any case, he apparently participated only in one confirmed expedition, exploring the lands of Brazil discovered by Pedro Álvares Cabral during the UsefulNotes/ConquestOfPortugueseIndia. He might have taken part of more, but this part of his life is unclear.

By 1505, some years after his return to Spain, Vespucci had become quite a big man of the Casa de Contratación in Seville, where he fulfilled multiple roles, among them manager of expeditions and professor of cosmography. There are implications that he wasn't as good in all of his jobs as he claimed, to the point he was apparently regarded as a massive KnowNothingKnowItAll in topics like piloting ships, but he did have some good ideas and deeds, like profiling the Gulf Stream or lining the ships hulls with lead to make them sturdier, and was by all accounts competent enough for the king to retain him in his job until his death seven years later. Amerigo had been married to a illegitimate daughter of the Great Captain, UsefulNotes/GonzaloFernandezDeCordoba, and had been also a neighbor of Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, a political ArchEnemy to UsefulNotes/HernanCortez who got eventually demoted by their frequent quarrels.

Now the interesting topic. Why is America named after him? The reason for this is found in a series of letters and works, supposedly penned by Vespucci, that were published throughout Europe from 1500 to 1506. Research has shown those works mainly contain well-known cosmographical knowledge, jabs to other navigators, and fantastic garbage about the discovered new lands, and it's unknown whether Vespucci wrote all of them, or even whether he actually wrote a single line of them. In any case, the more relevant ones are the 1504 ''Mundus Novus'' and the 1505 ''Letter to Soderini'', which contain the claims over which the name of America was erected.

* ''Mundus Novus'' is a letter-diary whose author claims to have participated in a Portuguese expedition in 1501, which [[MilesGloriosus he saved heroically from getting lost]] because [[TakeThat those Portuguese navigators couldn't differentiate between a polar star and a polar bear]], and in whose course he discovered the Indies are actually not Asia, but a new continent. The general plot of the diary does seem based on letters by Vespucci, but it goes on on a series of insane embellishments and contradictions that imply its author might have not been entirely familiar with Vespucci's job. The notion about a new continent was probably extrapolated from Columbus' own publications after his 1498 travel to the Orinoco river, where he realized he had discovered something much greater than a mere island, and from Pedro Mártir de Anglería's previous usage of the expression "new world" to refer to the Indies.
* The ''Letter to Soderini'' is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, a supposed letter from Vespucci to the statesman of Florence Piero Soderini. This work is certainly wrong to some degree, not only because the Vespucci and Soderini families were mortal enemies, but also because it contains all sorts of mistakes, disfigurations and even language typos that again imply the author didn't know much about Amerigo's cultural context. Some have speculated it might be a TranslationTrainWreck of a real letter, while others believe it is rather a mix of reality and fiction, and most are unanimous it clearly functions as a propagandistic work for Vespucci's homeland. It basically claims that Vespucci performed four great expeditions like Columbus and also reached the Indies a year before Columbus.

They were published in many European countries except by Spain and Portugal, probably because those countries were the headquarters of both Vespucci and Columbus and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to try to publish fake data about them over there. However, the damage was done, as the rest of the Europe enthusiastically embraced them and started churning out maps and treatises with the name of America stamped on them. Ironically, one of those publishers, Martin Waldseemüller, would later realize they had made a mistake, but by then it was too late, and the name "America" became deeply entrenched in European culture. It's unknown whether the real Vespucci ever found out about this whole mess, but people like Creator/BartolomeDeLasCasas jumped on the conclusion he had been the mastermind of the move and called him a massive liar (note the HypocriticalHumor here), an opinion that would be repeated in the next centuries by Creator/{{Voltaire}} and other authors, clashing against the more benevolent stance of Alexandre von Humboldt and Creator/RalphWaldoEmerson that Vespucci had likely no hand in the hoax. The truth remains unknown.

[[AsYouKnow As you can easily note]], he's the man UsefulNotes/TheAmericas (UsefulNotes/{{North|America}} and UsefulNotes/{{South|America}}) are named after, although the exact circumstances and merits for this are a truly complicated topic as only the Age of Exploration can produce. To sum up, [[WhamLine the reason of the name might be the greatest case of fake news in history]], the result of a series of written claims published in UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} which Vespucci himself might have not been even involved with. Indeed, it's even unknown whether this man ever learned during his lifetime that his name was being attached to the Indies, not to mention that it would become their ''permanent'' name in the history of mankind.

[[AsYouKnow As you can easily note]], he's the man UsefulNotes/TheAmericas are named after, although the exact circumstances and merits for this are a truly complicated topic as only the Age of Exploration can produce. To sum up, [[WhamLine the reason of the name might be the greatest case of fake news in history]], the result of a series of written claims published in UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} which Vespucci himself might have not been even involved with. Indeed, it's even unknown whether this man ever learned during his lifetime that his name was being attached to the Indies, not to mention that it would become their ''permanent'' name in the history of mankind.

Vespucci was the heir of a rich but decadent merchant family from UsefulNotes/{{Florence}} in UsefulNotes/TheCityStateEra of UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance. A cultured young man with a crave for exploration, he started working for the Medici and was put in charge of their business in Castile, where UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs were busy conquering Granada. He befriended UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus and participated as a backer for his first three expeditions, and afterwards Amerigo himself embarked in another expedition to the lands now known as UsefulNotes/{{Venezuela}} under Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. He was reportedly the one to name them, observing the native shacks built on water and comparing them to the city of Venice, thus calling them ''Venezzuela'' ("Little Venice"). Upon his return, Vespucci moved briefly to Portugal by unknown reasons: some claim he was working as a Spanish spy, others think the Spaniards kicked him away because they didn't trust him, and other believe the King of Portugal simply paid better. In any case, he apparently participated only in one confirmed expedition, exploring the lands of Brazil discovered by Pedro Álvares Cabral during the UsefulNotes/ConquestOfPortugueseIndia. He might have taken part of more, but this part of his life is unclear.

Amerigo Vespucci (9 March 1451 – 22 February 1512) was an UsefulNotes/{{Ital|y}}ian merchant, explorer and navigator for the Spanish and Portuguese Empires.

Vespucci was the heir of a rich but decadent merchant family from UsefulNotes/{{Florence}} in UsefulNotes/TheCityStateEra of UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance. A cultured young man with a crave for exploration, he started working for the Medici and was put in charge of their business in Castile, where UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs were busy conquering Granada. He befriended UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus and participated as a backer for his first three expeditions, and afterwards Amerigo himself embarked in another expedition to the lands now known as Venezuela under Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. He was reportedly the one to name them, observing the native shacks built on water and comparing them to the city of Venice, thus calling them ''Venezzuela'' ("Little Venice"). Upon his return, Vespucci moved briefly to Portugal by unknown reasons: some claim he was working as a Spanish spy, others think the Spaniards kicked him away because they didn't trust him, and other believe the King of Portugal simply paid better. In any case, he apparently participated only in one confirmed expedition, exploring the lands of Brazil discovered by Pedro Álvares Cabral during the UsefulNotes/ConquestOfPortugueseIndia. He might have taken part of more, but this part of his life is unclear.

Amerigo Vespucci (9 March 1451 – 22 February 1512) was an Italian merchant, explorer and navigator for the Spanish and Portuguese Empires.

[[AsYouKnow As you can easily note]], he's the man UsefulNotes/TheAmericas are named after, although the exact circumstances and merits for this are a truly complicated topic as only the Age of Exploration can produce. To sum up, [[WhamLine the reason of the name might be the greatest case of fake news in history]], the result of a series of written claims published in Europe which Vespucci himself might have not been even involved with. Indeed, it's even unknown whether this man ever learned during his lifetime that his name was being attached to the Indies, not to mention that it would become their ''permanent'' name in the history of mankind.

Amerigo Vespucci (9 March 1451 – 22 February 1512) was an Italian merchant, explorer and navigator for the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. [[AsYouKnow As you can note]], he's the man America is named after, although the exact circumstances and merits for this are a truly complicated topic as only the Age of Exploration can produce. To sum up, [[WhamLine the reason of the name might be the greatest case of fake news in history]], the result of a series of written claims published in Europe which Vespucci himself might have not been even involved with. Indeed, it's even unknown whether this man ever learned during his lifetime that his name was being attached to the Indies, not to mention that it would become their ''permanent'' name in the history of mankind.

Amerigo Vespucci (9 March 1451 – 22 February 1512) was an Italian merchant, explorer and navigator for the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. As you can note, he's the man America is named after, although the exact circumstances and merits for this are a truly complicated topic as only the Age of Exploration can give birth to. To sum up, [[WhamLine the reason of the name might be the greatest case of fake news ever]], result of a series of written claims published in Europe which Vespucci himself might have not been even involved with. Indeed, it's even unknown whether this man ever learned during his lifetime that his name was being attached to the Indies, not to mention that it would become their ''permanent'' name in the history of mankind.

Vespucci was the heir of a rich but decadent merchant family from UsefulNotes/{{Florence}} in UsefulNotes/TheCityStateEra / UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance. A cultured young man with a crave for exploration, he started working for the Medici and was put in charge of their business in Castile, where UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs were busy conquering Granada. He befriended UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus and participated as a backer for his first three expeditions, and afterwards Amerigo himself embarked in another expedition to the lands now known as Venezuela under Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. He was reportedly the one to name them, observing the native shacks built on water and comparing them to the city of Venice, thus calling them ''Venezzuela'' ("Little Venice"). Upon his return, Vespucci moved briefly to Portugal by unknown reasons: some claim he was working as a Spanish spy, others think the Spaniards kicked him away because they didn't trust him, and other believe the King of Portugal simply paid better. In any case, he apparently participated only in one confirmed expedition, exploring the lands of Brazil discovered by Pedro Álvares Cabral during the UsefulNotes/ConquestOfPortugueseIndia. He might have taken part of more, but this part of his life is unclear.

By 1505, some years after his return to Spain, Vespucci had become quite a big man of the Casa de Contratación in Seville, where he fulfilled multiple roles, among them manager of expeditions and teacher of cosmography. There are implications that he wasn't as good in all of his jobs as he looked, to the point he was apparently regarded as a massive KnowNothingKnowItAll in topics like piloting ships, but he did have some good ideas and deeds, like profiling the Gulf Stream or lining the ships hulls with lead to make them sturdier, and was by all accounts competent enough for the king to retain him in his job until his death seven years later. Amerigo had been married to a illegitimate daughter of the Great Captain, UsefulNotes/GonzaloFernandezDeCordoba, and had been also a neighbor of Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, a political ArchEnemy to UsefulNotes/HernanCortez who got eventually demoted by their frequent quarrels.

Now the interesting topic. Why is America named after him? The reason for this is found in a series of letters and works, supposedly penned by Vespucci, that were published throughout Europe from 1500 to 1506. Research has shown those works mainly contain well-known cosmographical knowledge for the time, jabs to other navigators, and fantastic garbage about the discovered new lands, and it's unknown whether Vespucci wrote all of them, or even whether he actually wrote a single line of them. In any case, the more relevant ones are the 1504 ''Mundus Novus'' and the 1505 ''Letter to Soderini'', which contain the claims over which the name of America was erected.

* ''Mundus Novus'' is a letter-diary whose author claims to have participated in a Portuguese expedition in 1501, which [[MilesGloriosus he saved heroically from getting lost]] because [[TakeThat those Portuguese navigators couldn't differentiate between the polar star and a polar bear]], and in whose course he discovered the Indies are actually not Asia, but a new continent. The general plot of the diary does seem based on letters by Vespucci, but it goes on on a series of insane embellishments and contradictions that imply its author might have not been entirely familiar with Vespucci's job. The notion about a new continent was probably extrapolated from Columbus' own publications after his 1498 travel to the Orinoco river, where he realized he had discovered something much greater than a mere island, and from Pedro Mártir de Anglería's previous usage of the expression "new world" to refer to the Indies.
* The ''Letter to Soderini'' is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, a supposed letter from Vespucci to the statesman of Florence Piero Soderini. This work is certainly wrong to some degree, not only because the Vespucci and Soderini families were mortal enemies, but also because it contains all sorts of mistakes, disfigurations and even language typos that again imply the author didn't know much about Amerigo's cultural context either. Some have speculated it might be a TranslationTrainWreck of a real letter, while others believe it is rather a mix of reality and fiction, and most are unanimous it clearly functions as a propagandistic work for Vespucci's homeland. It basically claims that Vespucci performed four great expeditions like Columbus and also reached the Indies a year before Columbus.

----

They were published in many European countries except by Spain and Portugal, probably because those countries were the headquarters of both Vespucci and Columbus and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to try to publish fake data about them over there. However, the damage was done, as the rest of the Europe enthusiastically embraced them and started churning out maps and treatises with the name of America stamped on them. Ironically, one of those publishers, Martin Waldseemüller, would later realize they had made a mistake, but by then it was too late, and America became deeply entrenched in European culture. It's unknown whether the real Vespucci ever found out about this whole mess, but people like Creator/BartolomeDeLasCasas jumped on the conclusion he had been the mastermind of the move and called him a massive liar (note the HypocriticalHumor here), an opinion that would be repeated in the next centuries by Creator/{{Voltaire}} and other authors, clashing against the more benevolent stance of Alexandre von Humboldt and Creator/RalphWaldoEmerson that Vespucci had likely no hand in the hoax. The truth remains unknown.

Vespucci was the heir of a rich but decadent merchant family from Florence. A cultured young man with a crave for exploration, he started working for the Medicis and was put in charge of their business in Castile, where UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs were busy conquering Granada. He befriended UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus and participated as a backer for his first three expeditions, and afterwards Amerigo himself embarked in another expedition to the lands now known as Venezuela under Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. He was reportedly the one to name them, observing the native shacks built on water and comparing them to the city of Venice, thus calling them ''Venezzuela'' ("Little Venice"). Upon his return, Vespucci moved briefly to Portugal by unknown reasons: some claim he was working as a Spanish spy, others think the Spaniards kicked him away because they didn't trust him, and other believe the King of Portugal simply paid better. In any case, he apparently participated only in one confirmed expedition, exploring the lands of Brazil discovered by Pedro Álvares Cabral during the UsefulNotes/ConquestOfPortugueseIndia. He might have taken part of more, but this part of his life is unclear.

They were published in many European countries except by Spain and Portugal, probably because those countries were the headquarters of both Vespucci and Columbus and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to try to publish fake data about them over there. However, the damage was done, as the rest of the Europe enthusiastically embraced them and started churning out maps and treatises with the name of America stamped on them. Ironically, one of those publishers, Martin Waldseemüller, would later realize they had made a mistake, but by then it was too late, and America became deeply entrenched in European culture. It's unknown whether the real Vespucci ever found out about this whole mess, but people like UsefulNotes/BartolomeDeLasCasas jumped on the conclusion he had been the mastermind of the move and called him a massive liar (note the HypocriticalHumor here), an opinion that would be repeated in the next centuries by Creator/{{Voltaire}} and other authors, clashing against the more benevolent stance of Alexandre von Humboldt and Creator/RalphWaldoEmerson that Vespucci had likely no hand in the hoax. The truth remains unknown.

They were published in many European countries except by Spain and Portugal, probably because those countries were the headquarters of both Vespucci and Columbus and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to try to publish fake data about them over there. However, the damage was done, as the rest of the Europe enthusiastically embraced them and started churning out maps and treatises with the name of America stamped on them. Ironically, one of those publishers, Martin Waldseemüller, would later realize they had made a mistake, but by then it was too late, and America became deeply entrenched in European culture. It's unknown whether the real Vespucci ever found out about this whole mess, but people like UsefulNotes/BartolomeDeLasCasas jumped on the conclusion he had been the mastermind of the move and called him a massive liar (note the HypocriticalHumor here), an opinion that would be repeated in the next centuries by Voltaire and other authors, clashing against the more benevolent stance of Alexandre von Humboldt and Creator/RalphWaldoEmerson that Vespucci had likely no hand in the hoax. The truth remains unknown.

Amerigo Vespucci (9 March 1451 – 22 February 1512) was an Italian merchant, explorer and navigator for the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. As you can note, he's the man America is named after, although the exact circumstances and merits for this are a truly complicated topic as only the Age of Exploration can give birth to. To sum up, [[WhamLine the reason of the name might be the greatest case of fake news ever]], result of a series of written claims published in Europe which Vespucci himself might have not been even involved with. Indeed, it's even unknown whether this man ever learned during his lifetime that his name would be permanently attached to the Indies.

Amerigo Vespucci (9 March 1451 – 22 February 1512) was an Italian merchant, explorer and navigator for the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. As you can note, he's the man America is named after, although the exact circumstances and merits for this are a truly complicated topic as only the Age of Exploration can give birth to. To sum up, [[WhamLine his claim of the name is likely the greatest case of fake news ever.]]

Vespucci was the heir of a rich but decadent merchant family from Florence. A cultured young man with a crave for exploration, he started working for the Medicis and was put in charge of their business in Castile, where UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs were busy conquering Granada. He befriended UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus and participated as a backer for his three expeditions, and afterwards Amerigo himself embarked in an expedition to the lands now known as Venezuela under Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. He might have been the one to name them, observing the native shacks built on water and comparing them to the city of Venice, thus calling them ''Venezzuela'' ("Little Venice"). Upon his return, Vespucci moved briefly to Portugal by unknown reasons: some claim he was a Spanish spy, other think the Spaniards kicked him away because they didn't trust him, and other believe the King of Portugal simply paid better. In any case, he apparently participated only in one confirmed expedition, exploring the lands of Brazil discovered by Pedro Álvares Cabral during the UsefulNotes/ConquestOfPortugueseIndia. He might have taken part of more, but this part of his life is unclear.

By 1505, some years after his return to Spain, Vespucci had become quite a big man of the Casa de Contratación in Seville, where he fulfilled multiple roles, among them manager of expeditions and professor of cosmography. There are implications that he wasn't as good in all of his jobs as he looked, to the point he was apparently regarded as a massive KnowNothingKnowItAll in topics like piloting ships, but he did have some good ideas and deeds, like profoling the Gulf Stream or lining the ships hulls with lead to make them sturdier, and was by all accounts competent enough for the king to retain him in his job until his death seven years later. He had been married to a illegitimate daughter of the Great Captain, UsefulNotes/GonzaloFernandezDeCordoba, and had been also a neighbor of Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, whom knowledgeable people might know as a political ArchEnemy to UsefulNotes/HernanCortez who got eventually demoted by their frequent quarrels.

Now the interesting topic. Why is America named after him? The reason for this is found in a series of letters and works, supposedly penned by Vespucci, that were published throughout Europe from 1500 to 1506. Research has shown those mainly contain well-known cosmographical knowledge, jabs to other navigators, and fantastic garbage about the discovered new lands, and it's unknown whether Vespucci wrote all of them, or even whether he actually wrote a single line of them. In any case, the more relevant ones are the 1504 ''Mundus Novus'' and the 1505 ''Letter to Soderini'', which contain the claims over which the name of America was erected.

* ''Mundus Novus'' is a letter-diary whose author claims to have participated in a Portuguese expedition in 1501, which [[MilesGloriosus he saved heroically from getting lost]] because those Portuguese navigators couldn't tell apart between the polar star and a polar bear, and in whose course he discovered the Indies are actually not Asia, but a new continent. The general plot of the diary does seem based on letters by Vespucci, but it goes on on a series of insane embellishments and contradictions that imply its author might have not been entirely familiar with Vespucci's job. The notion about a new continent was probably extrapolated from Columbus' own publications after his 1498 travel to the Orinoco river, where he realized he had discovered something much greater than a mere island, and from Pedro Mártir de Anglería's previous usage of the expression "new world" to refer to the Indies.
* The ''Letter to Soderini'' is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, a supposed letter from Vespucci to the statesman of Florence Piero Soderini. This work is certainly wrong to some degree, not only because the Vespucci and Soderini families were mortal enemies, but also because it contains all sorts of mistakes, disfigurations and even language typos that again imply the author didn't know much about Amerigo's cultural context. Some have speculated it might be a TranslationTrainWreck of a real letter, while others believe it is rather a mix of reality and fiction, and most are unanimous it is quite of a propagandistic work. It basically claims that Vespucci performed four great expeditions like Columbus and actually reached the Indies a year before Columbus.

Those were published in many European countries except by Spain and Portugal, probably because those countries were the headquarters of both Vespucci and Columbus and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to try to publish fake data about them over there. However, the damage was done, as the rest of the Europe enthusiastically embraced them and started churning out maps and treatises with the name of America on them. Ironically, one of those publishers, Martín Waldseemüller, would later realize they had committed a mistake, but by then it was too late, and America became deeply entrenched in European culture. It's unknown whether the real Vespucci ever found out about this whole mess, but people like UsefulNotes/BartolomeDeLasCasas jumped on the conclusion he had been the mastermind of the move and called him a massive liar (note the HypocriticalHumor here), an opinion that would be repeated in the next centuries by Voltaire and other authors, clashing against that of Alexandre von Humboldt and Creator/RalphWaldoEmerson that Vespucci had likely no hand in the hoax.

Amerigo Vespucci (9 March 1451 – 22 February 1512) was an Italian merchant, explorer and navigator for the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. As you can note, he's the man America is named after, although the exact circumstances and merits for this are a truly complicated topic as only the Age of Exploration can give birth to.

Vespucci was the heir of a rich but decadent merchant family from Florence. A cultured young man with a crave for exploration, he started working for the Medicis and was put in charge of their business in Castile, where UsefulNotes/TheCatholicMonarchs were busy conquering Granada. He befriended UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus and participated as a backer for his three expeditions, and afterwards Amerigo himself embarked in an expedition to the lands now known as Venezuela under Alonso de Ojeda in 1499. He might have been the one to name them, observing the native shacks built on water and comparing them to the city of Venecy, thus calling them ''Venezzuela'' ("Little Venecy"). Upon his return, Vespucci moved briefly to Portugal by unknown reasons: some claim he was a Spanish spy, other think the Spaniards kicked him away because they didn't trust him, and other believe the King of Portugal simply paid better. In any case, he apparently participated only in one confirmed expedition, exploring the lands of Brazil discovered by Pedro Álvares Cabral during the UsefulNotes/ConquestOfPortugueseIndia. He might have taken part of more, but this part of his life is unclear.

By 1505, some years after his return to Spain, Vespucci had become quite a big man of the Casa de Contratación in Seville, where he fulfilled multiple roles, among them manager of expeditions and professor of cosmography. There are implications that he wasn't as good in all of his jobs as he looked, to the point he was apparently regarded as a massive KnowNothingKnowItAll in topics like piloting ships, but he did have some good ideas and deeds, like lining the ships hulls with lead to make them sturdier or profiling the Gulf Stream, and was by all accounts competent enough for the king to retain him in his job until his death seven years later. He had been married to a illegitimate daughter of the Great Captain, UsefulNotes/GonzaloFernandezDeCordoba, and had been also a neighbor of Bishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, whom knowledgeable people might know as a political ArchEnemy to UsefulNotes/HernanCortez who got eventually demoted by his frequent quarrels.

Now the interesting topic. Why is America named after him? The reason for this is found in a series of letters and works, supposedly penned by Vespucci, that were published throughout Europe from 1500 to 1506. Research has shown those mainly contain well-known cosmographic knowledge, jabs to other navigators, and fantastic garbage about new lands, and it's unknown whether Vespucci wrote all of them, or even whether he actually wrote a single line of them. In any case, the more relevant ones are the 1504 ''Mundus Novus'' and the 1505 ''Letter to Soderini'', which contain the claims over which the name of America was erected.

* ''Mundus Novus'' is a letter-diary whose author claims to have participated in a Portuguese expedition in 1501, which he saved heroically from getting lost because those Portuguese navigators couln't tell the polar star from a polar bear, and in whose course he discovered the Indies are actually not Asia, but a new continent. The general plot of the diary does seem based on letters by Vespucci, but it goes on on a series of insane embellishments and contradictions that imply its author might have not been entirely familiar with Vespucci's job. The notion about a new continent was probably extrapolated from Columbus' own publications after his 1498 travel to the Orinoco river, where he realized he had discovered something much greater than a mere island, and from Pedro Mártir de Anglería's previous usage of the expression "new world" to refer to the Indies.
* The ''Letter to Soderini'' is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin, a supposed letter from Vespucci to the statesman of Florence Piero Soderini. This work is certainly wrong to some degree, not only because the Vespucci and Soderini families were mortal enemies, but also because it contains all sorts of mistakes, disfigurations and even language typos that again imply the author didn't know much about Amerigo's cultural context. Some have speculated it might be a TranslationTrainWreck of a real letter, while others believe it is rather a mix of reality and fiction, and most are unanimous it is a propagandistic work. It basically claims that Vespucci performed four great expeditions like Columbus and actually reached the Indies a year before Columbus.

Those were published in many European countries except by Spain and Portugal, probably because those countries were the headquarters of Vespucci and Columbus and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to try to publish fake news about them over there. However, the damage was done, as the rest of the Europe enthusiastically embraced them and started churning out maps and treatises with the name of America on them. Ironically, one of those publishers, Martín Waldseemüller, would later realize they had committed a mistake, but by then it was too late, and America became deeply entrenched in European culture. It's unknown whether the real Vespucci ever found out about this whole mess, but people like UsefulNotes/BartolomeDeLasCasas jumped on the conclusion he had been the mastermind of the move and called him a massive liar (HypocriticalHumor here), an opinion that would be repeated in the next centuries by Voltaire and other authors, clashing against that of Alexandre von Humboldt and Creator/RalphWaldoEmerson that Vespucci had likely no hand in the hoax.