When Ralegh, in his History of the World, reflected on the incomprehension that lay behind the haphazard naming of the New World, he did so with the weary knowingness of a new historicist. In seeking to disentangle geographical fact from ‘fantastical opinion’, he turned to linguistics, sceptically unpicking false etymologies as part of his empirical method. He dismissed the ‘fancy’ that identified Ophir/Parvaim with Peru. The latter was less a placename than a misunderstanding:

He rejected Montanus' claim that Yucatan was biblical Joctan with the same philological incisiveness: ‘Iucatan, is nothing else in the language of that Countrie, but [What is that?] or [What do you say?] For when the Spaniards asked the name of that place (no man conceiuing their meaning) one of the Saluages answered Iucatan (which is) What ask you, or What say you?’ (p. 175).