Who was America named after, Amerigo Vespucci or Richard Amerike?

Question

Who was America named after, Amerigo Vespucci or Richard Amerike?

Answer 1

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Answer 2

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Answer 3

Amerigo never travelled to the New World and had no influence on voyages to the New World. Amerike had lent Cabot the needed ships.

Answer 4

Vespucci got the credit after a German mapmaker Waldseemuller pictured him with the word 'America' in 1507, inspired by the unverified claims of the Soderini Letter, written by Vespucci or one of his supporters. But Waldseemuller removed the attribution in later maps, believing he had made a mistake.

Too much of Vespucci's claim fails to convince - he never commanded a voyage, the Soderini letter seems hyperbolic, biased and inaccurate, while there was no precedent for naming lands after commoners' Christian names i.e. it should have been Vespuccia like Colombia or, later, Rhodesia?

Assuming Waldseemuller did not invent the word America, then who did? Step forward Giovanni Cabotto (John Cabot), who could have named one of the lands he discovered after his major sponsor Richard Ameryk. But since Cabot and his maps were lost at sea, we shall probably never know for sure...

Answer 5

It was Richard Amerike, a Welshman, who America is named after. It is commonly mistaught in American schools that Vespucci is the correct answer, although the rest of the world is taught about Richard. (Then again, this is the same school system that teaches pupils that deoxygenated blood is blue and that it is correct to call all Eskimos, regardless of tribe, Inuits, so it's hardly surprising America manages to mess this up as well).