Tourmaline comes in almost every color in the rainbow and is one the brightest and most versatile gemstones available.
It has a history behind the name; which comes from toramalli, which means “mixed gems” in Sinhalese, a local language spoken in Sri Lanka. It’s the term Dutch merchants applied to this multicolored gemstones.
Tourmalines were first discovered by Spanish colonizers in Brazil in the 16th century. At the time green tourmalines were identified as the emerald. It wasn’t until the turn of 19th century geo scientists recognized tourmaline as a distinct mineral species.