HaLeiVi -“He left Spain then for a known reason, not for being a Jew.”
He left Spain on his expedition to help Jews flee from the Inquisition. This seems to be a historical fact that he set sail 4 days after the last expulsion of Jews from Spain.
“One reason people have speculated that he was Jewish is because he had a Jewish name, Kolon, as in Mahari Kolon.”
This is from a website called “Netplaces”:
“The last name Colombo (Columbus’s name in Italian) was common among Jews in Italy. And although he was a legal citizen of Genoa, he was fluent in Spanish and apparently didn’t know how to write in Italian, perhaps because he was a son or grandson of Spanish Jews.”
Colon was his name before Colombo.