This was in the "Observer" (UK) today. 28th April 2002

I reproduce it so that all 'Catters may consider the matter and decide wether "Columbia" is in fact the correct name and description.

Something to declare:

America named after Welsh Customs man

AMERICA was named after a British Customs officer and not, as historians have long believed, the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who participated in Christopher Columbus's voyages to the New World.

Martin Waidseemuller, whose 1507 map of the world was the first to show the so-called Unknown Territory as a separate continent, has long been credited with naming the new land after the Florentine nobleman. But according to a new book by Rodney Broome, Amerike, The Briton Who Gave America its Name, the country was named in 1496, years before Vespucci's voyage, by John Cabot, the Bristol-based explorer who stumbled on the continent while searching for trading opportunities.

'Cabot didn't know he had discovered a separate contnent during his earlier jour journey but he mapped the land he saw in detail and named it after the main sponsor of his trip, a Welsh aristocrat called Richard Amerike,' said Broome. Amerike or Ameryk-both Anglicised versions of Ap Maryke - was a wealthy landowner and merchant trader who lived with his wife, Lucy, and their two teenage daughters in Bristol's Clifton Manor.

He built a profitable career by trading with merchants in Spain and Portugal in the lat ter half of the fifteenth century. In 1486 he was made King's Customs' Officer and was encouraged by the King to send his ships on journeys of discovery. When Cabot was given per mission by Henry VII in 1496 to challenge Columbus the race to discover a trading route through the mysterious land mass that barred Europe's route to valuable trading opportunities in Asia, America was in the perfect position to help, says Broome.

According to papers Broome discovered in Westminster Abbey's archives, Vespucci and Columbus used Cabot's maps secretly. 'As their fame grew and Cabot's declined, the misconception grew that it was they who had named the new land,' he said.

I Think there might be a song there somewhere !

Gareth