The mispronunciation of the peculiar geographical name was evidently the cause of its orthography being obscured so soon after it was used as the designation for the elevated border of the Grande River. The more frequent use thereafter of _énorme_ for _anormé_ made the term more unfamiliar. It would seem also that when the name should have been written _La Terre d’Énorme Berge_, that it was inscribed, _La Terre de Normeberge_. The change of the qualifying term to a word of two syllables, as _norom_, _norum_, _nurum_, and _norim_, rendered the name more ambiguous. In like manner the noun _berge_ was corrupted, being spelled _bergue_, _bega_, _berg_, and _bagra_. In this way the territorial designation became _La Terre de Norumbega_, _La Terre de Norembegue_, _La Terre de Noromberge_, and _La Terre de Norembergue_, and its meaning and derivation incomprehensible to the descendants of its originators. Gerard Mercator, on a terrestrial globe, (_globus terrae_), made in 1541, represents the Grande River as if its channel were filled with _anormée bèrges_, which he designates with the misspelled name “Anorumbega.”[447] On a map of the world, made about the year 1548, for King Henry II. of France, the appellation “Anorobagra” designates the river of the Grand Scarp.[448] In the sixteenth century proper names less peculiar in construction than the appellation L’Anormée Berge, were written very irregularly. It is said by Disraeli that Leicester subscribed his name eight different ways, and that Villers is spelled fourteen times differently in the deeds of the family. Lower mentions that the name of Mainwaring, has the remarkable number of one hundred and thirty-one variations in different documents. Even in this age of dictionaries the spelling of uncommon geographical names does not always conform to their orthography. A record has been kept for a number of years of the different ways in which the name of the city of Cohoes, in the state of New York, has been spelled on letters addressed to that post-office, and the extraordinary number of one hundred and ninety-seven changes in the form of the appellation has been registered. There seems to be but a single statement that might be used to support an assertion that the natives of the country of New France originated the name “Norumbega.” It is in Ramusio’s Italian translation of the French sea-captain’s description of Francesca, in which it is said: “This region is called by the peasants Norumbega.” René Goulaine de Laudonnière, a well-informed French naval officer, who had command of a French fort in Florida, in 1564, contradicts the assertion that the name was transferred from an early map of the eastern coast of Asia, saying: “It is called by the moderns Terre de Norumberge.” André Thevet, the French geographer, who sailed along its coast in 1556, declares that his countrymen called the Grande River “Norombègue,” and the Indians, “Aggoncy.”