#InterestingFacts: St Lucia is the only country named after a woman? Loop Jamaica

Black Immigrant Daily News

While Ireland is named after the mythical goddess ?iru, there’s only one sovereign nation in the world named for a real-life woman.

That distinction lies with Saint Lucia, a Caribbean island nation christened in honour of St Lucy of Syracuse, patron saint of the blind, who died around the fourth century CE.

Saint Lucia was initially called Louanalao (meaning “Island of the Iguanas”) by the Indigenous Arawak people as early as 200 CE.

It was in 1502 that the origins of its current name formed when shipwrecked French sailors dubbed the place “Sainte Alousie”.

It was a common practice at the time to name islands after saints, and legend has it that the sailors reached the island on December 13 — St Lucy’s feast day.

Given the date’s significance, December 13 is now celebrated in the country as the National Day of St Lucia.

The Spanish who arrived around 1511 named the island “Sancta Lucia”; the current name formed after waves of colonisation by the English and French.

While female namesakes are rare on a national level, one woman has lent her name to dozens of smaller locations.

The name of Queen Victoria, the UK’s reigning monarch from 1837 to 1901, appears in the titles of locations around the globe, such as the provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada, and Zimbabwe’s breathtaking Victoria Falls.

You’d be hard-pressed to find an American woman with influence so vast. Even in the USA, only a handful of places are named for women, including Barton County, Kansas — named after Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross — and Dare County, North Carolina, honouring Virginia Dare, the first child of English parents to be born in the New World.

NewsAmericasNow.com