The ' little ' of the theorem.

When did this theorem start to be called 'Fermat's little theorem? Who (in English) first called it so?

Actually not everyone calls it so. In Vol I [1919] of Dickson's monumental three volume [ History of the ] Theory of Numbers there is an entire chapter devoted to 'Fermat's and Wilson's Theorems.' Hardy and Wright, Davenport, Nagell, ... , simply use 'Fermat's theorem.' And Sierpinski calls it 'Simple Theorem of Fermat' in his 1964 A Selection of problems in the Theory of Numbers .

Of course everyone knows what 'Wilson's theorem' is - since there is only one such theorem (but, no doubt, someone will write and tell me of another!) - but 'Fermat's theorem'? Well there are several claimants: the beautiful result - to name but one - that every prime p , with (mod 4), is representable by for some (unique; ignoring, of course, change of signs, and interchange) integers a and b , could well claim to be 'Fermat's theorem.'

On June 2001 I sent an email to the Number Theory Mailing List enquiring if anyone could answer the above questions. I received several responses (some public, some private), and I will place them in the Fermat's little theorem section of my web site. Briefly, however, I note that a probable answer is that the 'little' came into English from German, but there was no definitive answer as to who first used 'little.'