The etymology was mentioned by French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre when describing the bird in 1667. Christopher Columbus encountered frigatebirds when passing the Cape Verde Islands on his first voyage across the Atlantic in 1492. In his journal entry for 29 September he used the word "rabiforçado", modern Spanish "rabihorcado" or forktail. In the Caribbean frigatebirds were called Man-of-War birds by English mariners. This name was used by the English explorer William Dampier in his book "An Account of a New Voyage Around the World" published in 1697: The Man-of-War (as it is called by the English) is about the bigness of a Kite, and in shape like it, but black; and the neck is red. It lives on Fish yet never lights on the water, but soars aloft like a Kite, and when it sees its prey, it flys down head foremost to the Waters edge, very swiftly takes its prey out of the Sea with his Bill, and immediately mounts again as swiftly; never touching the Water with his Bill. His Wings are very long; his feet are like other Land-fowl, and he builds on Trees, where he finds any; but where they are wanting on the ground. Frigatebirds were grouped with cormorants, and sulids (gannets and boobies) as well as pelicans in the genus "Pelecanus" by Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his "Systema Naturae". He described the distinguishing characteristics as a straight bill hooked at the tip, linear nostrils, a bare face, and fully webbed feet. The genus "Fregata" was defined by French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1799. Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot described the genus name "Tachypetes" in 1816 for the great frigatebird. The genus name "Atagen" had been coined by German naturalist Paul Möhring in 1752, though this has no validity as it predates the official beginning of Linnaean taxonomy. In 1874, English zoologist Alfred Henry Garrod published a study where he had examined various groups of birds and recorded which muscles of a selected group of five they possessed or lacked. Noting that the muscle patterns were different among the steganopodes (classical Pelecaniformes), he resolved that there were divergent lineages in the group that should be in separate families, including frigatebirds in their own family Fregatidae.