Saintly Sagas of the Caribbean

Check out a map of the Caribbean and you'll find a dozen or so islands named after saints. That's because Columbus was fond of matching up the day he came across a new island with the feast days of the various saints.
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It's Dec. 13, 1498, and Christopher Columbus is cruising around the Caribbean looking for gorgeous islands to claim for God and Spain. He spots a big one with twin, half-mile-high volcanic peaks towering over pristine beaches. He names the island St. Lucia.

Check out a map of the Caribbean and you'll find a dozen or so islands named after saints. That's because Columbus was fond of matching up the day he came across a new island with the feast days of the various saints.

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View of St. Lucia's iconic twin peaks from Jade Mountain. Photo by Bob Schulman.

For example, the island of St. Martin (shared with St. Maarten) got that name when Columbus sailed by it on Nov. 11, 1493, the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, a French bishop. St. Vincent was so-named in 1498 when Columbus spotted it on Jan. 22, the feast day of St. Vincent de Saragossa. Ditto for St. Lucia later that year when Columbus came by on the feast day of the martyred Sicilian virgin St. Lucy.

Historians note the irony of the latter name, because St. Lucia is one of the prettiest islands in the Caribbean, and St. Lucy was the patron saint of the blind.

When no feast days lined up with Columbus' discoveries, he used other naming strategies, sometimes with saints, sometimes without them. He occasionally got personal about the names he used. Even whimsical.

Take St. Kitts, which he originally tagged St. Christopher after his own patron saint. The name later became St. Kitts after the 17th century nickname Kit or Kitt for St. Christopher.

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St. Barth was named after Columbus' brother. Photo courtesy of Comite du Tourisme de St. Barth.

Another island, St. Barthelemy (St. Barts or St. Barth for short), was named by Columbus in 1493 after his younger brother, Bartolomeo, although researchers differ on where the "St." designation came from (Columbus' brother was no saint).

Puerto Rico is a historical head-scratcher. In 1493, when he landed on the island we now know by that name, Columbus named it San Juan Bautista after St. John the Baptist. He called the island's capital Ciudad de Puerto Rico, or "city of the rich port." But somehow the island morphed into the name of its capital while the capital morphed into the original name of the island.

Also historically fuzzy is why Columbus kept the original Taino Indian name for Jamaica (the locals called it Xaymaca) when he landed on the Caribbean's third largest island in 1494.

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Steel drum band on Trinidad. Photo courtesy of Tourism Development Co. of Trinidad and Tobago by Jim Stephens.

Columbus was cruising around the southern Caribbean in 1498 when he came across an island he called Trinidad (after the Catholic Holy Trinity) and one nearby he tagged Tobago (after the tobacco crops grown there by the native Caribs). Columbus thought another island in the area looked like a pomegranate, so he whimsically named it Grenada (Spanish for the round, reddish fruit).

There's a whole different story behind the naming of what's now the U.S. and British Virgin Islands. As Caribbean expert Jaime Capulli tells it: "When Columbus came across this group of 100 or so islands in 1493, he was so dazzled by their pristine beauty that he called them Las Virgenes -- meaning "the virgins" after the legendary 11,000 virgin handmaidens of the martyred 3rd century British Princess St. Ursula."

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Ancient guns stand vigil over a harbor in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Photo by Bob Schulman.

Never let it be said that Columbus didn't know who sewed his sails, says Capulli. He notes that when The Great Explorer came across the Caribbean's largest island -- Cuba -- he named it Isla Juana after the Spanish prince Juan de Castilla y Aragon, the only son of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand (who financed Columbus' voyage). But over time, Isla Juana reverted back to a shortened version of the island's original Taino name, Cubanacan.

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