Natives believed that the stone came from the sea, and they called the gem Blue Stone. Méndez took his young daughter's name Larissa and the Spanish word for sea (mar) and formed Larimar, to suggest the colors of the Caribbean Sea where it was found. 

                 LARIMAR was 1st discovered for mining and marketing in 1974. Although, many of the inhabitants of the Dominican Republic and their ancestors were long aware of the stone, the first mention of the stone was in a request to mine Larimar (not its name back then) in 1916.