History of the Isle of Wight seek an alternative to bronze. It has been suggested that a 1st century BCE reference to "Ίκτιν" ("Ictin") by the Graeco-Sicilian Diodorus Siculus might refer to the Isle of Wight, although St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall is now considered more likely. A century later, Pliny the Elder uses its Latin name "Vectis" and in the mid 2nd century Ptolemy confirms the position of Vectis as ""...below Magnus Portus"" (probably the port near Bosham). The Roman historian Suetonius calls the island "insula Vecta" in his account of its capture in year 43, referring to the future emperor Vespasian, who ""proceeded to
Britain (place name) Britain, after which "Britain" became the more commonplace name for the island called Great Britain. After the Anglo-Saxon period, "Britain" was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical "Historia Regum Britanniae" ("c." 1136) refers to the island of Great Britain as "Britannia major" ("Greater Britain"), to distinguish it from "Britannia minor" ("Lesser Britain"), the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany, which had been settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by Celtic migrants from the British Isles. The term "Great Britain" was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal