Hispaniola is an island in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean, located between Cuba and Puerto Rico. It is the most populous island in the West Indies and the second-largest by land area, after Cuba. Covering an area of 76,192-square-kilometre (29,418 sq mi), it is divided into two separate sovereign countries: the Spanish–speaking Dominican Republic (48,445 km2 (18,705 sq mi)) to the east and the French and Haitian Creole–speaking Haiti (27,750 km2 (10,710 sq mi)) to the west. The only other divided island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin, which is shared between France (Saint Martin) and the Netherlands (Sint Maarten). At the time of the European arrival of Christopher Columbus, Hispaniola was home to the Ciguayos, Macorix, Ciboney and Classic Taíno Indigenous peoples. Hispaniola is the site of the first European fort in the Americas, La Navidad (1492–1493), the first settlement, La Isabela (1493–1500), and the first permanent settlement, the capital of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo (1498–present). These settlements were founded successively during each of Columbus's first three voyages under the patronage of the Spanish Empire. The Spanish controlled the island from 1492 until the 17th century, when French pirates began establishing bases on the western side of the island, which resulted in the creation of the Saint-Domingue colony under the French Empire by 1659. The most commonly used name for the island is Española ("diminutive for Spain, according to Pedro Mártir de Anglería"), whose Latinized form is Hispaniola. The name of Santo Domingo, after Saint Dominic de Guzmán, the Castilian Catholic priest founder of the Dominican Order, is also widely used.
Etymology
Indigenous rule At the time of its European discovery during the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, the island was called various names by its Native peoples: the Ciguayo, the Macorix, and the Taíno. Early chroniclers identified the Indigenous names (appearing with various spellings) of the island as Bohío ("homeland"), Haiti ("land of high mountains"), and Quisqueya ("mother of the lands"), which were used by Natives from different parts of the island, although doubts have been raised about the authenticity of Quisqueya. Another name that has been mentioned is Babeque ("land of gold"), but it likely corresponded to another island, as Columbus only identified in his journal the island as Bohío, and used Babeque to refer to an island located east of Hispaniola, which was likely Boriquén, today Puerto Rico. While navigating east-west along the northern coastline during Columbus's second voyage in 1493, physician Diego Álvarez Chanca recorded that Haiti was the name of the easternmost part of the island, which he described as low-lying and flat. This region was followed by two others called Samaná and Bohío. Spanish clergyman and historian Bartolomé de las Casas, who settled in the Cibao valley in 1502, documented that the island was called Bohío and Haiti by the Indigenous people, while administrator and historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, who was supervisor of gold smelting in Santo Domingo in 1514, reported Haiti. In addition to Haiti, which he defined as "altitude" synonymous with "mountains", Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, author of Decades of the New World in 1511 and chronicler of the Council of the Indies in 1520, recorded another name, Quisqueya, which he defined as "something large" or "larger than anything" synonymous with "universality". Like de las Casas, Ferdinand Columbus, son of Columbus who visited the island during the fourth voyage of his father (1502-1504) and during the governorship of his brother Diego Columbus in 1509, identified the Native names of the island as Bohío and Haiti. Like d'Anghiera, prominent Spanish historians Alonzo de Santa Cruz and Francisco López de Gómara identified Haiti and Quisqueya as the Native names of the island. In 1540, de Santa Cruz defined the former as "montes" (mountains) and "aperezas" (rugged terrain) and the latter as "grandeza excedía a todas" (greatness exceeding all), indicating that Haiti was how the Natives called the island because it was how they universally named the many mountains in the island, while Quisqueya was used because they thought the large size of island meant that it and its neighboring islands were the full extent of the world. In 1553, López de Gómara defined Haiti as "aspereza" (rugged terrain) and Quisqueya as "tierra grande" (large land). However, historians disagree on the authenticity of the Indigenous origins of Quisqueya, as research has shown that the name does not appear to derive from the Taíno language. While some dismiss it as an invention of d'Anghiera, which was subsequently spread by later historians, others contend that it was one of the names used by the Natives, possibly the Ciguayo. Despite the debate, Dominicans have adopted Quisqueya as the popular and poetic name of the Dominican Republic in eastern Hispaniola.
Spanish rule Upon landing at the Nord-Ouest department of northwestern Haiti on December 5, 1492, Columbus called the island Española ("little Spain"), as it resembled geographical parts of Spain in his opinion. Historians de las Casas and d'Anghiera popularized the name in its Latin form Hispaniola, meaning Spain in diminutive, according to Mártir. While the name in Spanish today is La Española, Columbus did not use the article La ("the"). The island continued to be called Española until shortly after the mid-17th century, when the territory began to be known interchangeably as Isla Española de Santo Domingo. The following two centuries, Santo Domingo prevailed as the name until the 18th century. This name dates back to 1498, when Bartholomew Columbus founded a city on the bank of the Ozama River, which he named Santo Domingo after Saint Dominic. Antonio del Monte y Tejada and José Gabriel García, in their respective works, recorded that on December 6, 1508, by royal decree, the King of Spain extended the name Santo Domingo to the entire island. However, this royal decree is unknown, and it is believed that the name Santo Domingo was applied to the island out of general usage, as it was the name of Santo Domingo, the principal political and commercial center in the island, which is today the capital of the Dominican Republic.
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