Two sets of letters were published before Amerigo Vespucci died In which he describes his voyages. One set describes two trips, one in 1499 and one in 1501 & 1502. The first one was for Spain and the one which began in 1501 was for Portugal. These voyages are confirmed by much historical evidence. In these two voyages he traced almost the entire east coast of South America, from Venezuela to Southern Argentina. Also, it was on these voyages that he worked out a method to determine longitude when on land far from home. This great accomplishment in the history of navigation is pictured on this page. For these and other accomplishments he became justly famous, even in his own lifetime.

However, it may be that some of his friends in Florence wanted to guarantee his place in history. For another set of letters appeared. Like the first these were addressed to important people in Florence. In these letters four voyages are described, one in 1497 - 1498, and one in 1503 -1504 as well as the two described in the first set of letters. At this time in history, printed books were new technology. It was common to print the personal letters of prominent people.

In 1507 a group of German scholars published a geography book, similar to a modern atlas, called "Cosmographiae Introductio." One of the contributors to the book was a cartographer, or map maker, named Martin Waldseemuller. He had read the published letters. He drew a portrait of Vespucci on a corner of his heavily illustrated map of the World. The reports of Vespucci's 1499 voyage are reflected in this map. A piece of coast which is clearly Venezuela, the Guianas, and northern Brazil was labeled "America." Amerigo was still alive when this book was published. He lived another eight years. We don't know if he saw the book. However it took many years for the new name to become fully accepted and applied to North and South America.