Place names on Réunion and Mauritius provide an interesting comparison. The two neighbouring islands in the Indian Ocean were both shaped by European colonisation, slavery, migration and the plantation economy, yet there was also differences in their colonial histories.
Réunion remained French and is today an overseas department of France. In contrast, Mauritius was first colonised by the Dutch, then by the French and finally by the British. These differences are reflected in their geographical names.
One of the most striking features of Réunion’s place names is the large number beginning with Saint or Sainte. The island contains towns such as Saint-Denis, Saint-Paul, Saint-Pierre, Saint-Benoît. This reflects the strong influence of French Catholicism during the period when the island was being settled.
Réunion was formally colonised by France in the seventeenth century and French settlement developed particularly from the 1660s onwards.
There is a remarkable concentration of saint names.
Mauritius also has some Christian and French names, but its toponymy is noticeably more varied. This is partly because Mauritius experienced three successive European colonial administrations.
The Dutch were the first Europeans to establish a permanent colony and named the island Mauritius after Prince Maurice of Nassau in 1598.
When the French took possession in 1715, they renamed it Île de France. Britain captured the island in 1810 and restored the name Mauritius.
The French period nevertheless left a very strong imprint on Mauritius. Port Louis, the present capital, was named after King Louis XV of France.
Other names similarly commemorate French people. Mahébourg, for example, commemorates Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais.
Mauritius contains names that reflect individuals involved in French colonial administration rather than predominantly saints.
Mauritius also has a particularly interesting collection of descriptive French names. Quatre Bornes, literally “four boundary markers”, refers to boundary stones associated with the surrounding sugar estates.
Pamplemousses refers to the grapefruit or pomelo.
Black River is an example of a geographical description.
The variety demonstrates that the French influence on Mauritius produced a much broader range of naming patterns.
Interestingly, when Britain conquered the island in 1810, it did not systematically replace the existing French geographical names. Mauritius today has the unusual situation of being an English-speaking state in many official and governmental contexts while retaining a remarkably French-looking geographical map.
Réunion, by contrast, never experienced a comparable change from French to British sovereignty. Its place names therefore developed within a continuous French administrative and linguistic framework. This helps explain why the French Catholic naming tradition is particularly visible there.
There is also an important difference in the extent to which the names reveal the islands’ multicultural histories. Both islands were plantation societies dependent on enslaved labour from Africa and Madagascar and later experienced substantial Indian migration.
Mauritius developed a particularly diverse naming landscape in which Dutch, French, English, Indian, African and descriptive names can be found alongside one another.
Réunion’s official geographical names tend to look more consistently French, even though the population itself displays more diversity.
The contrast can therefore be summarised accordingly. Réunion’s place names are strongly characterised by French Catholic saint names, reflecting the island’s long and continuous history as a French possession.
Mauritius has a more mixed colonial toponymy, reflecting Dutch beginnings, French colonisation and British conquest. French names remain dominant in many parts of the island, but they include saints, governors, kings, geographical descriptions and plant names.
The two islands consequently demonstrate how place names can preserve political history. On Réunion, the repeated appearance of Saint and Sainte reflects French Catholic colonisation. In Mauritius, names preserve different layers of Dutch, French and British history.
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