10 Euros Amerigo Vespucci

Amerigo Vespucci's name on the map — and by extension, on two continents — owes more to a German cartographer than to any deliberate act of the explorer himself. Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 Universalis Cosmographia was the first document to apply the name "America," based on the Latinized form of Vespucci's first name, after his published letters convinced European readers that the landmass was not Asia but something entirely new. Vespucci died in 1512 without knowing his name had been assigned to a hemisphere.