Amerigo Vespucci – 1454-1512

This Italian navigator participated in New World voyages during 1499–1500 and 1501–1502 and served Spain as piloto mayor (“master navigator”) from 1508 to 1512. In 1507, the German geographer Martin Waldseemhller coined the name “America” in his Cosmographiae Introductio, mistakenly attributing the discovery of the New World to Vespucci, whose earliest New World voyage was in 1499, seven years after Columbus.