Coquina Jasper is really Cacoxenite included quartz. The name Coquina caught on for two reasons: Coquina sounds like a stone name, even though true coquina is a sedimentary limestone containing shell fragments (not related). The gemstone trade loosely uses “jasper” for anything opaque and patterned, even if it’s not scientifically jasper. So the name “Coquina Jasper” is 100% a marketing term.

The name “Coquina Jasper” appears in commercial catalogs in the 1990s, this name was likely invented by a U.S. importer or cabochon cutter. The misinformation spread fast in bead catalogs, metaphysical shops, online crystal sellers, and lapidary magazines. By the early 2000s, “Coquina Jasper” was everywhere, even though geologists knew it was wrong.