The root of it isn't just carnal. The women want a companion too, someone to show them around, romance them, make them feel special and needed -- something they don't feel at home.

But the names the men and women are known by colloquially belie the true nature of the transaction, some research suggests. It's sex for hire, where black men's flesh is tied -- at least temporarily -- to white women's purse-strings.

The men go by many monikers. In Jamaica and other former British colonies they're called rent-a-gents, rent-a-rastas, rent-a-tutes, the foreign service. In the Dominican Republic, they're sanky pankys (a play on "hanky panky").

The tourists get nicknames too. British ones go by "Shirley Valentine" (from the 1989 hit movie about a Liverpool housewife finding liberation in Greece). In Bermuda, they're "longtails" or "yellowtails."

In Jamaica, the name depends on the woman's colour: "Milk bottles" if they're white, newly arrived and, to put it crudely, "in need of filling" (as one Negril man put it to British writer Julie Bindel in 2003).

If they're black, the women are called Stellas (from the popular 1998 film How Stella Got Her Groove Back, about a black San Francisco stockbroker on holiday in Jamaica).

Canadians have made it into the slang lexicon, too. In Barbados, female sex tourism has been dubbed "Canadian secretary syndrome."

In Martinique, locals refer to incoming flights of Air Canada as "Air Coucoune" -- French for "Air Pussy."

Little wonder. Canadian women in search of sex have been coming to the Caribbean for years.

"You guys were the pioneers," said Belliveau, who sells her 410-page book through her publishing website, beaumonde.net. "Pretty much the first group (of female sex tourists) in the Caribbean after the takeoff of jet travel (in the '60s) was French-Quebecois women in Barbados. They had a tremendously high reputation among the local beach boys. They were fun-loving and generous and a real great time."

It's still true, added Belliveau, 52, an ex-journalist and divorcee who spent much of her 20s and 30s travelling the world and -- as she freely admits -- having sex wherever she went. (She's now remarried to an African-American.)

"Canadian women are mostly in Barbados now, which is somewhat upmarket; Jamaica is poorer," Belliveau said. "And the Dominican is slowly getting the reputation of having men who are very eager to be the world's best lovers. In the French islands, the men are more suave and gallant and won't accept (cash) payment."

But sex with the locals isn't without drawbacks, let alone controversy.

The most obvious is money. According to a couple of studies in Jamaica, it can cost $20 to $30 for an hour of sex, or $150 for a full night that includes oral sex (often seen as demeaning by the island men). Second, some tourist women have reported that Caribbean lovers are overrated, dulled by drink or dope; others can be chauvinistic, domineering, even violent.

Then there's the social impact of the sex trade. It affects ordinary tourists, who complain of harassment. Moreover, it affects local women, who complain of the men not being around to provide for their children. Island women can act hostile toward white vacationers, seeing them as homewreckers.