224 



KNOWLEDGE 



[DSOEUBEB 1, 1891. 



chain of Scotland has become so firmly rooted that it 

 seems impossilile to alter the usage. 



Too firmly established to be now displaced is the name 

 of lona, the little island on which St. Columba founded 

 the monastery which was to be the mother church of 

 Scotland, and from which Irish missionaries went forth to 

 convert the heathen nations of England, Germany, and 

 Switzerland. But this name lona originated, as Dr. 

 Reeves has proved, in the blunder of a copyist. The 

 island was called I, Hii, la, or lou, " the island," whence 

 we have the Mediaeval name I-colm-kill, the " Island of St. 

 Columba's cell." Adamnan, in his " Life of St. Columba," 

 speaks of loua Insula, using the adjectival Latinized 

 form loua for lou. -Some copyist, mistaking, as he 

 easily might do, the u for ti, wrote lona Insula for loua 

 Insula, and hence the island now appears on every map as 

 lona. 



There are many names on our maps which have arisen 

 from natives not understanding the questions put to them 

 by inquiring travellers. Asking the name of some con- 

 spicuous object, a mountain or a river, the native guide 

 replied in his own language " I don't know," or " I don't 

 understand you," phrases which have been forthwith jotted 

 down on the map as the name of the mountain or the river. 

 Thus the name Yucatan, discovered in 1517 by Hernandez 

 de Cordoba, was long supposed to be the native designation 

 of the country. The native name, however, is Maya, and 

 Yucatan is evidently a Ghost-name. Now in the Maya 

 language tirliam means " I don't understand you," and 

 jucatan means " What do yon say ? " Evidently the name 

 Yucatan must have arisen from one of these answers, 

 probably the latter, being given by the native who was 

 questioned by Hernandez as to the name of the country. 



The vast State of Texas, whose area is greater than that 

 of France and England put together, also bears a Ghost- 

 name of similar origin. When Father Damian visited the 

 coast at the end of the 17th century he asked a chief of the 

 native tribe of the Assinaes who they were. The chief, 

 misunderstanding him, replied te.rin, a " good friend," 

 which Father Damian supposed to be the tribal name, and 

 hence the Assinaes came to be called the Texas Indians, 

 and this imaguiary tribe-name was adopted as the name 

 of the territory. 



The name of the great Canadian dominion is also believed 

 to have originated in a misunderstood answer to a mis- 

 understood question. Wlien Cartier, the French explorer, 

 first sailed up the St. Lawrence, it would seem that, 

 stretchmg out his hand, he asked a native the name of the 

 country. He replied " Canada," a name by which the 

 country has since been known. We now know that Kanata 

 is a Red Indian designation for a village, or collection of wig- 

 wams, and the native must have thought that Cartier had 

 pointed to some group of huts, and had asked what it was 

 called. Canada, therefore, is itself a Ghost-name. Or take 

 the name of the great State of Indiana. It was so called 

 because it had been a reservation for the Red Indians. The 

 American aborigines acquired the name of Indians because 

 Columbus, when he discovered the New World, imagined 

 that he had reached some islands lying off the coast of 

 India, which he called the " Antilles," a Spanish word, 

 meaning the " islands in front," being supposed by 

 him to be islands lying in front of India. Hayti he 

 identified with .Japan, and Cuba with China. Columbus 

 died in the belief that all the lands he had discovered 

 belonged to Asia ; and the delusion long survived. 

 Thus there is a \illage near Montreal called " La Chine " 

 (China). It bears the name of a house so called, erected 

 by La Salle in 1G66, which he named " La Chine," in the 

 belief that the Mississijipi, which he was preparing to 



explore, flowed into the Pacific, and that it would be 

 possible, by descending it, to reach China and .Japan. 



Even the name America may almost be called a Ghost- 

 name, certainly so in the sense in which citizens of the 

 United States call themselves " Americans." Columbus 

 believed that some of the lands he had discovered formed a 

 part of India, and hence they received the names of " India 

 Major" (Greater India), or of " Indias Occidentales " (the 

 West Indies), which still cleaves to the islands where 

 Columbus first touched land in 1492. Five years later, in 

 1497. the Englishman John Cabot reached Newfoundland, 

 which he called " Prima Vista," the land " first seen.'' andhe 

 then coasted southwards as far as Florida. Hence the name 

 of Newfoimdland, which he gave to the continent he had dis- 

 covered, was long used in England to denote the whole of 

 North America, till at length it was restricted to the land 

 first reached by Cabot. In 1.500 the Portuguese, under 

 Cabral, reached South .\merica, which was named " Terra 

 da Santa Cruz " (the " Land of the Holy Cross "). A few 

 years later South America acquired the name of " Terra 

 do Brazil," the land of a dye-wood, hmzil, so called 

 because it produced the colour of glowing charcoal (hrma). 

 According to Amerigo Vespucci's own account, he sailed, 

 in a subordinate capacity, between 1497 and 1.504, with an 

 expedition which discovered a small part of the coast near 

 the mouth of the Orinoco. What part (if any) Amerigo 

 Vespucci took in the discovery of the New World is still a 

 matter of controversy. However, in a book on geography, 

 published in le07, the name of " Americi Terra" ithe 

 '•Land of Americus") was proposed by WaldseemiiUer 

 for that portion of the coast which Vespucci claimed to 

 have visited, but at this time it was not known that North 

 America, or, as it was then called, Newfoundland, belonged 

 to the same continent — in fact, a strait is shown on early 

 maps in place of the Isthmus of Panama. This form, 

 America, is found on a map published in 1.522, but the 

 name seems to have been unknown to Girava, a Spaniard, 

 who observes in his " Cosmographia," published in 1570, 

 that India, or the " New World," was called by some 

 persons "India Major" (Greater India), to distinguish it 

 from " India Oriental," or " East India." The name of 

 America, as a designation of the New World, seems to have 

 become popular mainly owing to its adoption in the great 

 atlas of ()rtellius. published in 1570. Even in 1608, 

 Acosta, in his " History of the Indies, " prefers the old 

 Spanish name of the Indies to the new term America. 

 Thus it appears that for about a century the five names, 

 Newfoundland, the Indies, Brazil, the New World, and 

 America struggled for existence, the ultimate choice of the 

 name America being largely due to the supposed fitness 

 of a name analogous to tliose of the three continents of 

 the Old World. ' 



The name of Australia, the last of the continents 

 to be discovered, also arose out of a strange mis- 

 conception. The early geographers supposed that the 

 two hemispheres must contain a nearly equal quantity of 

 land, in order to prevent the world from overbalancing by 

 reason of. the greater weight of the Northern Hemisphere. 

 Hence they placed on their maps a vast conjectural 

 southern continent which they termed Terra Australis 

 Incognita, the •' undiscovered southern land." When at 

 last Austraha became Itnown, the Terra Australis Incognita 

 became Terra Australis, and it was only in 1814 that 

 Flinders, in his book entitled " A Voyage to Terra 

 Australis," modestly observes in a footnote : " Had I 

 permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it 

 would have been to convert it into Australia, as being more 

 agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the name of 

 the other great portions of the earth." The suggestion of 



