I start at Goya, as if to read like an English reader, and then my eye ends up following the curve of the path and I end up in the island in the middle. From there I read the straits, Thadia, and start working my way back to the right, so I end up doing a < shape over it.

No, I don't look at the unlabeled one first. Only if there's no text at all. Text is like brainwashing, once you've learned to read it it's impossible to ignore.

Also there's no way that sailing past that chunk of land, sailors would have no idea what's on it. They'd at least be able to mark it as treed or rocky, for one thing. There would be a reason it's unexplored and the dangerous territory would be clearly delineated as some place to not land. We all make things up, but the difference between a good map and a great map is in how much thought was given to "why is it like this"