How to correctly make a public synonym

This is a pretty silly one, but I need help.

I have a table owned by mydbowner. It is named mydbowner.mytable. I tried to make a public synonym by issuing the command:

CREATE OR REPLACE PUBLIC SYNONYM mytable FOR mydbowner.mytable;

When I do this, and I query the table I get:

ORA-01775: looping chain of synonyms

How do I make this synonym without having the problem.