In most versions of the Iberian origin theory, the Spanish or Portuguese passed their name on to the Iroquois, who rapidly adopted it in place of their own prior word for a village; however, no historical evidence for any such Iberian-Iroquoian interaction has ever actually been found. Elliott's "valley" theory, conversely, was that the Spanish gave their name for the area directly to Cartier, who then entirely ignored or passed over the virtually identical Iroquoian word. According to Elliott, Cartier never explicitly stated that there was a direct connection between or as the Iroquoian word for "village" and "Canada" as the new name of the entire territory, and never accounted for the spelling difference between and "Canada"—and thus the Spanish etymology had to be favoured because the spellings matched. Notably, Cartier never wrote of having any awareness of any preexisting Spanish or Portuguese name for the region either, meaning that Elliott's allegation that the derivation was not adequately supported by Cartier's own writing on the matter was also true of his own preferred theory.