Actually this isn't breaking news at all - but I saw it on an episode of QI last night and thought it was kinda interesting.
I was taught in school that the name 'America' derived from the name of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci but apparently this is not necessarily the case at all.
It appears that Welshman Richard Ameryke (Richard ap Meryke), a financial backer of the Italian navigator John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), is a more likely candidate for the origins of the name.
I was taught in school that the name 'America' derived from the name of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci but apparently this is not necessarily the case at all.
It appears that Welshman Richard Ameryke (Richard ap Meryke), a financial backer of the Italian navigator John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), is a more likely candidate for the origins of the name.
According to this info provided by Robert R Roberts to the St Pete's New World Celts chapter, not the Italian merchant and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci, but Richard Ameryk, a Welshman and wealthy Bristol merchant.
Ameryk was the chief investor in the 2nd transatlantic voyage of John Cabot - the English name of the Italian navigator Giovanni Caboto whose voyages in 1497 and 1498 laid the groundwork for for the later British claim to Canada. He moved to London from Genoa in 1484 and was authorized by King Henry VII to search for unknown lands to the West.
On his little ship Matthew, Cabot reached Labrador in May 1497 and became the 1st recorded European to set foot on North American soil, pre-dating Vespucci by 2 years. Cabot mapped the N. American coastline from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland. As the chief patron of the voyage, Richard Ameryk would have expected discoveries to be named after him. There is a record in the Bristol calendar for that year "...on St John the Baptist's Day [24 June], the land of America was found by the merchants of Bristowe, in a ship of Bristowe called the Mathew" that clearly suggests this is what happened.
Although the original calendar manuscript has not survived, there are numerous references to it in other contemporary documents. This is the first use of the term "America" to refer to the new continent.
http://www.celticatlanta.com/realms/wales/americanamedforwelshman.htm
It is greatly thought by many historians these days that the actual name for AMERICA came from the name ap Meryk/AMERYKE from the information that came with Richard AMERYKE/Richard ap Meryke and calling the new land AMERYKE/AMERIKE County or something like that.
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/MYRICK/2001-10/1003330987