Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci, on the other hand, was no divinity, no emperor and no king.

He interviewed all the intrepid mariners of the day, including Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci and Sebastian Cabot, and examined their ships’ logs and charts.

Amerigo Vespucci, whose name is the one that stuck?

Or maybe America itself should be my first name, after Amerigo Vespucci, the cartographer whose first name — Americus in Latin — has become a part of all our American identities.

At the front of the class, Mr. Perry droned on about Amerigo Vespucci and Vasco da Gama and the Great Age of Discovery while I stared out the window.