GREAT BAY/MARIGOT, St. Martin (October 31, 2021)—What is St. Martin Day all about, and how do we represent it accurately in writing? These are questions to be answered given the persistent inaccuracies in referring to the day both orally and in written form.
Firstly, St. Martin Day is NOT:
a celebration of the discovery of the island by Christopher Columbus
a celebration of the division of the island by the Dutch and French or the 1648 Partition Treaty, a.k.a. the Treaty of Concordia
a celebration of St. Maarten(’s)/St. Martin(’s) Day
To this day, it remains questionable whether Christopher Columbus “discovered” our island on November 11, 1493, as is often claimed.
In fact, records show Columbus a long way from St. Martin on that date, and the first appearance of the island on a map was in 1516 as Sam Mtim.
Precisely which European power first used the name St. Martin is not certain, but as early as 1630, both the French and the Dutch were referring to the island as St. Martin.
The Dutch spelling, St. Maarten, to refer to the southern part, does not appear until 1936, apparently for the Netherlands to lay claim to the name aspect of its “own” half of the island, since the English and French spellings were identical.
November 11 is the celebration of the oneness—not the division—of the St. Martin people.
The date was settled on by two legendary, elected leaders of the St. Martin people, Dr. Claude Wathey (in the South) and Dr. Hubert Petit (in the North), with the support of many of their contemporaries such as Clem Labega and Felix Choisy, as a people’s celebration.
According to Dr. Petit, the founders were very clear that “the St. Martin people needed a celebration for themselves,” and they were not going to celebrate the division of the island by the two colonial powers.
When you write “St. Maarten/St. Martin,” you are literally putting a slash—a symbol of conflict, division, and violence—between the official names for the two territories, whose people remain one.
While the slash can be used in English to show that two things are closely related, it is mostly used to represent the word “or” and to show opposition, and it is avoided in formal writing.
When you use the slash, you are in essence referring to either one of the two parts of the island, and not the entire island, and you are showing just the opposite of what the intention of the celebration is.
When the apostrophe is used in English, it is to indicate possession or omission.
An apostrophe after “St. Martin” indicates that either the day belongs to St. Martin (possession) or that something is missing between “St. Martin” and the letter “s” (omission).
The day is the celebration of the St. Martin people’s oneness, with “St. Martin” functioning as an adjective to modify the word “day.” The correct way to represent what we celebrate on November 11 in writing, as in spoken language, is “St. Martin Day,” just like Aruba Day, Saba Day, or Independence Day, etc.