c. 1470-c. 1521

German clergyman and cartographer who coined the name America for the New World. Waldseemüller read of Amerigo Vespucci's explorations in a 1504 letter. Adept at inventing names, including his own, he named the newly discovered continents in honor of Vespucci in Cosmographiae Introductio and on a world map, both in 1507. His map was widely distributed, and thus two continents came to be known by the name of a relatively minor Italian navigator.