1492-00-00: (Hispaniola, the Second-Largest Island in the Caribbean, Divided Between Haiti in the Western Third and the Dominican Republic in the Eastern Two…

1492-00-00: (Hispaniola, the Second-Largest Island in the Caribbean, Divided Between Haiti in the Western Third and the Dominican Republic in the Eastern Two-Thirds, Named by Columbus “the Spanish Island” in a Claim That Erased the Taíno Name and Presence): Hispaniola is the second-largest island in the Caribbean and the stage on which some of the most consequential events in Western Hemisphere history unfolded. Haiti occupies the western third, the Dominican Republic the eastern two-thirds. When Columbus arrived in 1492, he called it La Isla Española, “the Spanish Island,” and the Latin translation of its shortened form became the standard English name. The colonial names Saint-Domingue and Santo Domingo, which properly refer to the French and Spanish colonies respectively, were often applied loosely to the whole island, a habit that obscured the political and cultural distinctions that would later define two very different nations. Along with Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico, Hispaniola forms the Greater Antilles. The name Columbus gave the island is itself a small act of erasure: the Taíno already had names for their homeland, but those names did not survive the conquest that followed.