Resumption of Name “Mayda”
On sixteenth-century maps this island is still generally presented, though lacking on those of Ruysch, 1508;[158] Coppo, 1528[159] ([Fig. 13]); and Ribero, 1529;[160] but suddenly and almost completely the name Mayda in its various forms takes the place of Man, a substitution quite unaccounted for. There are hardly enough instances of survival of the older name to be worth mentioning. Was there some resuscitation of old records or charts, now lost again, which thus overcame the Celtic claim and supplied an Arabic or at least a quite alien and unusual designation? The little mystery is not likely ever to be cleared up. The previously mentioned map from the Ptolemy edition of 1513 ([Fig. 11]), which perhaps first introduces it, also presents several other innovations in departing from the crescent form and shifting the island a degree or two southward; and these changes surely seem to hint at some fresh information. That there was no supposed change of identity is shown by the fact that succeeding cartographers down to and beyond the middle of that century revert generally to the established crescent form and to nearly the same place in the ocean previously occupied by Man, while applying the new name Mayda. Thus an anonymous Portuguese map of 1519 or 1520,[161] reproduced by Kretschmer, and the graduated and numbered map of Prunes, 1553[162] ([Fig. 12]), concur in placing Mayda or Mayd at about latitude 48° N., the latitude of Quimper, Brittany, and almost exactly the same as that given by the Pizigani to the crescent island on its first appearance on the maps as a clearly recognizable entity.