Por Daniel Balcacer

Christopher Columbus, in his Navigation Diary, repeatedly mentioned that the Tainos called the island Bohío. In fact, on Wednesday, December 5, 1492, after his arrival on our island, Columbus revealed that while he was in Cuba, the natives told him about the existence of an island abundant in gold, which they called Baneque or Babeque. He decided to continue the expedition in search of this island, but instead arrived at the one he called Española, marveling at its natural beauty, which he believed resembled some regions of Spain.

In the Diary, it reads: "He could not go to Baneque because the wind was Northeast. Going like this, he looked to the Southeast and saw land, and it was a very large island, which he already had information about from the Indians, who called it Bohío, populated by people." Several days later, on December 9, 1492, the Admiral decided to baptize the island Bohío with the name Española. There are, he wrote, "some of the most beautiful valleys in the world, almost similar to the lands of Castile, and these have an advantage, which is why he named the said island Española.

Fray Ramón Pané, a Jerónimo priest who came to the New World on Columbus' second voyage and was the first to learn the language of the Macorix Indians of Española, in his Account of the Antiquities of the Indians, says that "the island called Española, which was previously called Haití, and that's what the inhabitants called it; previously, this and the other islands were called Bouhí". Emiliano Tejera, in his book Indigenismos, tells us that the word had several forms of writing: Bohío, Buhío, or Boío.

Bartolomé de las Casas tells us in his History of the Indies that: "And so, looking at the lands, he set his eyes on the Southeast, and saw a very large land, and this is the great and felicitous island Española, about which the Indians had very frequent news, as something very ostentatious they named it, calling it Bohío, I don't know why they gave it such a name, since it was all one language from Cuba and Española, since it was only called Haytí, the last syllable acute… So, on Wednesday, December 5, the Admiral discovered the island of Haytí, which he later, as will be seen, called Española.

The word Quisqueya Perhaps the chronicler who created the most controversy regarding the names of the island was Pedro Mártir de Anglería. This author can be said to be the first, around 1556, to publish a history about the discovery of America. Although it is true that he never was in America, it is also true that he drew from valuable primary sources, among them Christopher Columbus himself. In his Décadas del Nuevo Mundo, Anglería wrote: "The names that the primitive inhabitants gave to Española were first Quizqueia and then Haití. Such denominations were not children of caprice, but of the significance that, according to them, they had…

Anglería is, therefore, the first chronicler of the Indies to mention the word Quisqueya as an indigenous name for the island. He also recorded that the Indians called the island Cipango. This author is the one who owes us the invention of the word Hispaniola, which, according to some experts in linguistic matters, was an erroneous translation of Española, a "capricious Latinization of the legitimate name of Española, which was the one that the island really had since its colonization by the Europeans", according to Leónidas García Lluberes.

José Gabriel García maintains in his Compendium of the History of Santo Domingo that "The main name that the natives gave to the island where we live was Haití, which among them meant high land; but in addition to this name, it had in the eastern part the name Quisqueya, which meant mother of the earth; and in the western part the name Babeque or Bohío, whose translation was land of gold". As for Babeque, we know from Christopher Columbus that this name did not correspond to the island of Bohío or Haití.

Among Dominican historians, however, there is no consensus regarding the word Quisqueya. There are those who incline, like Jorge Tena Reyes, towards the thesis that the primitive name of the island was only one: Haití. Others, however, prefer to adhere to the thesis that, upon the arrival of the Europeans, the island had several names, and Quisqueya was one of them. César Nicolás Penson wrote that Quisqueya was not an indigenous word, but recognized being among the first authors to use it as a distinctive feature of Dominican identity. Later, Canon Apolinar Tejera wrote an article titled "¿Quid Quisqueya?" in which he described the word as apocryphal, demonstrating that it did not exist in Taino terminology and was an invention of chronicler Pedro Mártir de Anglería.

Apparently, there is no reliable document – except for Anglería's version – that proves Quisqueya as an indigenous name for the island, although Anglería noted that at the time of discovery, the word was already in disuse. Regarding the noun Quisqueya (which Columbus does not mention in his Diary), there are doubts about its authenticity as a Taino word. However, a linguistic reality forces us to accept the word, as it has been used by poets and has become another gentilic identifier for Dominicans. Historian Emilio Rodríguez Demorizi argued that "the Quisqueyan gentilic has barely passed from literature, poetry, and oratory. It is our poetic name, like Borinqueño in Puerto Rico.

.The Relations of the time seem to indicate that the Tainos had baptized various regions of the island with the names mentioned above. In the Manual of Dominican History, Frank Moya Pons preferred to avoid the confusing tradition of using various indigenous words and calls the island populated by the Tainos "Haití". Roberto Cassá, in his Economic and Social History of the Dominican Republic, also uses the name "Haití" to refer to the island; Franklin Franco, in his History of the Dominican People, mentions the names "Haití" or "Babeque". Regarding the latter name, it can be said that the Tainos referred to another island, different from ours.

Española or Santo Domingo

It will be remembered that around 1498 (there is no certainty about the day or year) Bartolomé Colón – the Admiral's brother – founded a city on the eastern bank of the Ozama River, which he called Santo Domingo.

The city of Santo Domingo soon became the main port of the Española island, and when it was destroyed by a hurricane in 1502, the governor of the colony, Frey Nicolás de Ovando, ordered its transfer to the western bank of the Ozama River, where it is currently located.

Antonio del Monte y Tejada and José Gabriel García recorded in their respective works that on December 6, 1508, through a Royal Decree, the King of Spain extended the name of Santo Domingo to the entire island. However, this Royal Decree is unknown, and it is believed that the name of Santo Domingo was applied to the island by general use, perhaps because it seemed more pleasant and convenient to Europeans and Creoles.

Why was the name of Santo Domingo adopted for the entire island? Among several reasons, the fact that the Española Island became the most important and lucrative center of commercial activities in the New World. This circumstance determined that the name of the main city and seat of the colonial government prevailed over that of Española. Several important institutions established in the city of América, but with jurisdiction beyond the island's limits, bore the name of Santo Domingo, such as the Real Audiencia de Santo Domingo and the Archbishopric of Santo Domingo.

The name of Isla Española prevailed during the first three decades of the 16th century; but by 1550, the entire insular territory was referred to as Santo Domingo or combined with Española in this way: Isla Española de Santo Domingo, as evidenced in a book from 1730 written by Jesuit priest Pedro Javier Francois de Charlevoix titled History of the Island Española or Santo Domingo; and in another by French publicist Moreau de Saint Mery, published around 1796, titled Topographic and Political Description of the Spanish part of the Island of Santo Domingo.