The word «Argentina» comes from the Latin argentum (the payment) and in the Spanish language it was first used as a latinism and poetic adjective (there is a document 1587 in which it is used). Since the times of Pedro de Mendoza The phrase "Argentine river" or "Argentine province" was sometimes used to refer to the region of the Silver river. The Portuguese cartographer Lopo Male refers to the place as Silvery Earth on a map of 1554