The Origin of the Name
Naturally the origin of the word has been found a fascinating problem. Ever since Formaleoni,[250] near the close of the eighteenth century, called attention to the delineation of Antillia in Bianco’s map of 1436, discussed below, as indicating some knowledge of America, there have been those to urge the claims of the suppositional lost Atlantis instead. The two island names certainly begin with “A” and utilize “t,” “l,” and “i” about equally; but “Atlantis” comes so easily out of “Atlas,” and the great mountain chain marches so conspicuously down to the sea in all early maps, that the derivation of the former may be called obvious; whereas you cannot readily or naturally turn “Atlas” into “Antillia,” and there is no evidence that any one ever did so. As to geographical items, both have been located in the great western sea; but that is true of many other lands, real or fanciful. Something has been made of the elongated quadrilateral form of Antillia; but Humboldt points out[251] that in the description transmitted by Plato this outline is ascribed to a particular district in Atlantis, not to the great island as a whole, and that, even if it could be understood in the latter sense, there seems no reason why a fragment surviving the great cataclysm should repeat the configuration of Atlantis as a whole. There seems a total lack of any direct evidence, or any weighty inferential evidence, of the derivation of Antillia from Atlantis.