The name of an Indian tribe and of a district in Nicaragua called Amerrique, this district — rich in gold — had been visited by both Columbus and Vespucci, who then made this name known in Europe. For both explorers the words Amerrique and gold became synonymous. Subsequently, Vespucci changed his Christian name from Alberico to Amerigo.
That’s the best explanation so far. The name is much older than Columbus and so was the gold mining.
It’s not true. In fact, it’s just left-wing propaganda.
http://www.uhmc.sunysb.edu/surgery/america.html
...The most explosive, haunting, almost credible etymology — the so-called Amerrique theory which was first advanced in 1875 — reappeared in the late 1970s in an essay by Guyanan novelist Jan Carew, titled “The Caribbean Writer and Exile.” ...Carew moves from the “fictions” of Columbus to those of Vespucci with these striking words: “Alberigo Vespucci, and I deliberately use his authentic Christian name, a Florentine dilettante and rascal, corrected Columbus’s error [thinking he had found the Orient] … Vespucci, having sailed to the American mainland declared that what Columbus had indeed stumbled on was a New World.” ...Carew is resurrecting the ideas of Jules Marcou, a prominent French geologist who while studying North America argued, as did other 19th-century writers, that the name America was brought back to Europe from the New World; and that Vespucci had changed his name to reflect the name of his discovery. Specifically, Marcou introduced the name of an Indian tribe and of a district in Nicaragua called Amerrique, and asserted that this district — rich in gold — had been visited by both Columbus and Vespucci, who then made this name known in Europe... Subsequently, according to Marcou’s account, Vespucci changed his Christian name from Alberico to Amerigo... Like Marcou, Carew wants us to believe that America was not named after Vespucci, but vice versa; that Vespucci had, so to speak, re-named himself after his discovery, gilding his given name by modifying it to reflect the significance of his discovery... First of all, Vespucci’s name must be cleared... Vespucci was born in 1454 in Florence, where he was baptized, according to the official record, “Amerigho [not, as Carew asserts, Alberigo] Vespucci”; the use of the form Amerigho for Amerigo is an instance of the orthographic anarchy that existed in the spelling of proper names.