The country now called the Dominican Republic gets its name from the capital city Santo Domingo, founded by Columbus. It was given that name because St. Dominic was his father's patron saint.
Excellent-he does have an incredibly engaging and approachable style!
He has a sense of bawdiness in his telling of the tale as an old sailor would, as indeed, he was! I absolutely love his telling of the first encounter between an early French explorer and indigenous Indian tribes along the rocky coast of Maine where the natives treated the explorers to such rude behavior and he described the scene as:
“One can easily imagine the scene, glowering Frenchmen, Indian boys urinating in their direction, braves laughing and turning to bare their buttocks, raising an unholy rackets as only Indians can...”
My apologies to Morison if I have butchered it in my memory, but I could almost visualize him telling the story with the obvious humor on his face...