May was born in the small village of Schellinkhout, just east of the town of Hoorn in North Holland.
[1] The brothers were cousins of the contemporaneously far more famous sailor Jan Cornelisz May, [2] who led several expeditions to explore the Northeast passage and between 1614 and 1617, circumnavigated the world with Joris van Spilbergen.
The highly regarded cartographer Joris Carolus was on board, and made a (now lost) report and (still existing) map of the voyage.
In 1620, the cartographer Willem Jansz Blaeu transferred the name to the island as a whole, although two other Dutch captains—Jan Jansz Kerckhoff, sailing for the Noordsche Compagnie, but privately financed by other people, and Fopp Gerritsz, sailing for the Englishman John Clarke, of Dunkirk—appeared to have beaten May to the island by a week or two.
[5] After his 1614 voyage of discovery, Jan Jacobsz May was as late as 1623 mentioned as a captain on a Dutch warship employed by the Admiralty of the Noorderkwartier.