Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454 - February 22, 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator, and cartographer who was born in the Republic of Florence. Sailing for Portugal around 1501-1502, Vespucci demonstrated that Brazil and the West Indies were not Asia's eastern outskirts (as initially conjectured from Columbus' voyages) but a separate, unexplored land mass colloquially known as the New World. It came to be called "the Americas", a name derived from Americus (the Latin version of Vespucci's first name). He became a citizen of the Crown of Castile and died in Seville (1512)