The recorded history of Haiti began on 5 December 1492, when the European navigator Christopher Columbus landed on a large island in the region of the western Atlantic Ocean that later came to be known as the Caribbean. It was inhabited by the Taíno and Arawakan people, who variously called their island Ayiti, Bohio, and Kiskeya (Quisqueya). Columbus promptly claimed the island for the Spanish Crown, naming it La Isla Española ("the Spanish Island"), later Latinized to Hispaniola.