Judging by the early names for America, medieval and, indeed, early modern writers often failed to recognise the ‘New World’ as new or even single. Asia and Paradise, the Western Indies and the Fortunate Isles, Atlantis and Norumbega, Antillia and the elusive Isle of Brazil – all these and many more were applied to the Americas or parts thereof during the first two centuries after 1492 ce. Even John Cabot’s (c. 1451–98) ‘new found land’ of 1497 does not reveal whether the land was new or whether it was a newly found part of something old. Edmundo O’Gorman’s opinion on American discovery remains astute today: only what is known to exist in principle can be discovered; finding ex nihilo is invention.1