Richard Amerike

Richard ap Meryk, Anglicised to Richard Amerike (or Ameryk) (c. 1445–1503) was a wealthy English merchant, royal customs officer and sheriff, of Welsh descent. He was the principal owner of the Matthew, the ship sailed by John Cabot during his voyage of exploration to North America in 1497. A Bristolian scholar and amateur historian, Alfred Hudd, suggested in 1908 that the continental name America was derived from Amerike's surname due to his sponsorship of Cabot's expedition to Newfoundland and was used on early British maps that have since been lost. This is not the consensus view of how America was named, but has been repeated as a form of historical revisionism. The consensus view is that America is the namesake of Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian explorer and cartographer. The earliest known use was by another map maker, Martin Waldseemüller, who used the Latinized feminine form of Vespucci's first name, "America", on his world map of 1507.