Saint Marinus

I do mention it in the book here.

America, we've already mentioned San Marino, named after St. Marinus, a Christian stonemason who founded the Republic.

Dominican Republic, named after St. Dominic.

Mozambique apparently derives its name from Moussa bin Beek, who was a 16th century Arab trader.

So San Marino is a very old country, actually.

It, uh, derives its name from Saint Marinus, who was a stonemason from the, at the time, Roman island of Rab, which is present-day Croatia.

And he, uh, got involved in this rebuilding project in Rimini on Italy's Adriatic coast after it was destroyed by Liburnian pirates, and he then went on to found an independently ruled monastic community on Mount Titian, which is about 10 miles inland of Rimini, and that is what we regard as San Marino.

It's been continuously this way ever since and still has these foundational documents that date from 1600, but they in turn were based on laws that had come from, uh, 1300 and date even further back to just around, you know, sort of 200, 300 years AD, which is when this place really got going.