La Hispaniola
| La Española (Spanish) | |
|---|---|
View from Hispaniola
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| Geography | |
| Location | Caribbean |
| Coordinates | 19°N 71°W / 19°N 71°WCoordinates: 19°N 71°W / 19°N 71°W |
| Archipelago | Greater Antilles |
| Area | 76,192 km2 (29,418 sq mi) |
| Area rank | 22nd |
| Coastline | 3,059 km (1,900.8 mi) |
| Highest elevation | 3,175 m (10,417 ft) |
| Highest point | Pico Duarte |
| Administration | |
| Largest settlement | Santo Domingo |
| Largest settlement | Port-au-Prince |
| Demographics | |
| Population | 21,396,000 (2014) |
| Pop. density | 280 /km2 (730 /sq mi) |
Hispaniola (Spanish: La Española; Latin: Hispaniola; Taíno: Haiti) is the 22nd-largest island in the world, located in the Caribbean island group, the Greater Antilles. It is the second largest island in the Caribbean after Cuba, and the tenth most populous island in the world.
Two sovereign nations share the 76,192-square-kilometre (29,418 sq mi) island. The Dominican Republic, at 48,445 km2 (18,705 sq mi), is nearly twice as large as its neighbour, Haiti, with an area of 27,750 km2 (10,710 sq mi). The only other shared island in the Caribbean is Saint Martin, which is shared between France (Saint-Martin) and the Netherlands (Sint Maarten).
Hispaniola is the site of the first permanent European settlement in the Americas, founded by Christopher Columbus on his voyages in 1492 and 1493.
The island was called by various names by its native people, the Taíno Amerindians. No known Taíno texts survive, hence, historical evidence for those names comes to us through three Spanish historians: Pietro Martyr d‘Anghiera, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. Fernández de Oviedo and de las Casas both recorded that the island was called Haiti ("Mountainous Land") by the Taíno. D'Anghiera added another name, Quizqueia (supposedly "Mother of all Lands"), but later research shows that the word does not seem to derive from the original Arawak Taíno language. (Quisqueya is today mostly used in the Dominican Republic.) Although the Taínos' use of Haiti is verified, and the name was used by all three historians, evidence suggests that it probably was not the Taíno name of the whole island, but only for a region (now known as Los Haitises) in the northeastern section of the present-day Dominican Republic.
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Wikipedia