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POSSIBLE ARABIC ORIGIN OF NAME 83 Madeira into Amadera, and Brazil into Obrassil. Evidently this map-maker had a fancy for superfluous vowels as a begin- ning of his island names. He may have been led into it by the common practice of prefixing "I" or the alternative "Y" (mean- ing Insula, I sola, Ilha, or Innis) instead of writing out the word for island in one language or another. However, there is a recorded Arabic association of this par- ticular 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), 3 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 approxi- mately 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 at- tested 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 stav- 8 [E. F.] Jomard: Les monuments de la geographic, ou recueil d'anciennes cartes europe'ennes et orientalcs Paris. [1842-62], PI. X, I.