HOW THE CAYMAN ISLANDS GOT ITS NAME?
The Cayman Islands was first sighted by European explorers on May 10 1503, owing to a chance wind that blew Christopher Columbus' ship off course. On his fourth and final voyage to the New World, Columbus was en route to the island of Hispaniola (home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic) when his ship was thrust westward toward "two very small and low islands, full of tortoises (turtles), as was all the sea all about, insomuch that they looked like little rocks, for which reason these islands were called Las Tortugas". Columbus named the islands after the turtles he saw in the waters around them.
The two islands sighted were Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. A 1523 map showing all three Islands gave them the name Lagartos, meaning alligators or large lizards, but by 1530 the name Caimanas was being used. It is derived from the Carib Indian word for the marine crocodile, which is now known to have lived in the Islands. This name, or a variant, has been retained ever since. Thus the word eventually developed into Cayman and adding the word Islands, we became the �Cayman Islands�.
An early English visitor was Sir Francis Drake, who on his 1585-86 voyage to these waters reported seeing"great serpents called Caimanas, like large lizards, which are edible." It was the Islands' ample supply of turtle, however, that made them a popular calling place for ships sailing the Caribbean and in need of meat for their crews. This began a trend that eventually drastically depleted our local waters of the turtle, compelling Caymanian turtle fishermen to go further afield to Cuba and the Miskito Cays in search of their catch.
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