Possible Arabic Origin of Name
If Mayda may, therefore, be said to belong in a sense to the twentieth century, it is none the less very old, and the name has sometimes been ascribed to an Arabic origin. Not very long after their conquest of Spain the Moors certainly sailed the eastern Atlantic quite freely and may well have extended their voyages into its middle waters and indefinitely beyond. They named some islands of the Azores, as would appear from Edrisi’s treatise and other productions; but these names did not adhere unless in free translation. The name Mayda was not one of those that have come down to us in their writings or on their maps, and its origin remains unexplained. It is unlike all the other names in the sea. Perhaps the Arabic impression is strengthened by the form Asmaidas, under which it appears (this is nearly or quite its first appearance) on the map of the New World in the 1513 edition of Ptolemy ([Fig. 11]).[140] But any possible significance vanishes from the prefixed syllable when we find the same map turning Gomera into Agomera, Madeira into Amadera, and Brazil into Obrassil. Evidently this map-maker had a fancy for superfluous vowels as a beginning of his island names. He may have been led into it by the common practice of prefixing “I” or the alternative “Y” (meaning Insula, Isola, Ilha, or Innis) instead of writing out the word for island in one language or another.
Fig. 11—Section of the map of the New World in the 1513 edition of Ptolemy showing the islands of Mayda (asmaidas) and Brazil (obrassil). (After Kretschmer’s hand-copied reproduction.)
However, there is a recorded Arabic association of this particular island under another name. It had been generally called Mam or Man, and occasionally other names, for more than a century before it was called Mayda. Perhaps the oldest name of all is Brazir, by which it appears on the map of 1367 of the Pizigani brothers ([Fig. 2]),[141] a form evidently modified from Brazil and shared with the round island of that name then already more than forty years old on the charts. The Brazil which we specially have to do with bears roughly and approximately the crescent form, which later became usually more neat and conventionalized under the name Man or Mayda. It appears south (or rather a little west of south) of the circular Brazil, which is, as usual, west of southern Ireland and a little south of west of Limerick. The crescent island is also almost exactly in the latitude of southern Brittany, taking a point a little below the Isle de Sein, which still bears that name. In this position there may be indications of relation with both Brittany and Ireland. The former relation is pictorially attested by three Breton ships. One of them is shown returning to the mouth of the Loire. A second has barely escaped from the neighborhood of the fateful island. A third is being drawn down stern foremost by a very aggressive decapod, which drags overboard one of the crew; perhaps she has already shattered herself on the rocks, offering the opportunity of such capture in her disabled state. A dragon flies by with another seaman, apparently snatched from the submerging deck. Blurred and confused inscriptions in strange transitional Latin seem to warn us of the special dangers of navigation in this quarter; the staving of holes in ships, the tawny monsters, known to the Arabs, which rise from the depths, the dragons that come flying to devour. The words “Arabe” and “Arabour” are readily decipherable; so is “dragones.” Perhaps there is no statement that Arabs have been to that island, for their peculiar experience may belong to some other quarter of the globe; but the verbal association is surely significant. The name Bentusla (Bentufla?) applied to this crescent island by Bianco in his map of 1448[142] has sometimes been thought to have an Arabic origin; but one would not feel safe in citing this as absolute corroboration. The Breton character of the ships, however, may be gathered (as well as from their direction and behavior) from the barred ensigns which they carry, recalling the barred standard set up at Nantes of Brittany, in Dulcert’s map of 1339,[143] just as the fleur-de-lis is planted by him at Paris.