Antilles

The Antilles (pronounced with three syllables , the stress on the second: 'ant-ILL-ease', IPA: /æn ˈtɪl iːz/) are the islands of the Caribbean Sea. They are divided into the Greater Antilles, the larger islands - Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico with some smaller islands in the north - and the Lesser Antilles in a range on the east, divided into the Leeward Islands and the Windward Islands, and the Leeward Antilles to the south, bordering Venezuela which governs most of them.

Etymological note: it is odd that the name Antilles, never applied to other archipelagos, is known from before Columbus's first voyage. Everett-Heath, 2010 suggests that the name was coined "possibly by the Florentine (Italian) cosmographer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli who corresponded with Columbus before his great voyage, suggesting that the shortest route to Asia was to the west and a stop could be made en route at the island of Antilia." Antilia, according to Encyclopedia Britannica 1911, was "one of those mysterious lands, which figured on the medieval charts sometimes as an archipelago, sometimes as continuous land of greater or lesser extent, constantly fluctuating in mid-ocean between the Canaries and East India." It has been suggested that Antillia (with double '-l-') may be a scribal confusion with 'Atlantis', that other great mythical island. Like Hy-Brazil, Antilles is a European word now used for an American place which was first used in Europe before Columbus 'discovered' the Americas. "It is possible that Antilles is derived from the Latin ante 'before', and illas 'islands' to suggest islands off the mainland" (Everett-Heath); but according to Cortesão, (1954), "The term Antillia is probably derived from the Portuguese "'Ante-Ilha'"," which may be translated as 'Fore-Island' [perhaps the islands one reaches before the mainland]; "Island of the Other", or "Opposite Island" [perhaps on the opposite side of the Atlantic from Portugal].