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
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