Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, also often known simply as Saint Vincent, is an island country in the Caribbean. It is located in the southeast Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, which lies in the West Indies at the southern end of the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea where the latter meets the Atlantic Ocean. The main island is home to the capital, Kingstown.

Christopher Columbus, the first European to reach the island, named it after St. Vincent of Saragossa, whose feast day it was on the day Columbus first saw it (January 22, 1498). The name of the Grenadines refers to the Spanish city of Granada, but to differentiate it from the island of the same name, the diminutive was used. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Carib natives who inhabited the island of St. Vincent called it Youloumain, in honor of Youlouca, the spirit of the rainbows, who they believed inhabited the island.