The Kalinago name for St Lucia, as it was known to the last group of indigenous islanders well into the latter part of the seventeenth century, and as was recorded by Raymond Breton in the 1660s, was Ioüanálao (Breton 1665). But as the Guadeloupean anthropologist Theirry L’Etang has observed, the writing, and probably the pronunciation of this name, has varied since the late sixteenth century. He records: Iguanaronia, yanacaro, guanarao, joannalouw, ioannalau, then Breton’s Ioüanálao and from the late seventeenth century hiwanarau and eventually hewanorra, which is now the accepted spelling for the indigenous name of St Lucia.
Lennox Honychurch, University of the West Indies