Ictis British tin was shipped from Massalia on the Mediterranean coast of Gaul. Julius Caesar, in his "De Bello Gallico", says of the Veneti: "This last-named people were by far the most powerful on the coast of Armorica: they had a large fleet plying between their own ports and Britain; they knew more about the handling of ships and the science of navigation than anyone else thereabouts." William Camden, the Elizabethan historian, took the view that the name "Ictis" was so similar to "Vectis", the Latin name for the Isle of Wight, that the two were probably the same island. The
History of the Isle of Wight the Proto-Germanic word "*wextiz", which would have been "Vectis" in Latin, and survives in various modern-language forms, including Modern English "whit" "something small" (English "wight" is considered a revival from Middle English), German "wicht" "dwarf, imp", Dutch "wicht" "little girl" and Norwegian "vette" "being, creature (especially supernatural)". This might suggest that the meaning is something like "daughter island" or "little companion"; however if Germanic languages were not widely spoken in Britain during the Roman era, as has been the consensus, then they would be an unlikely source for the Latin "Vectis". However more recently it has been argued that the