BAHAMAS

The Commonwealth of The Bahamas is an independent, sovereign, English-speaking country consisting of two thousand cays and seven hundred islands that form an archipelago. It is located in the Atlantic Ocean southeast of the United States; north of Cuba, Hispaniola (Dominican Republic & Haiti) and the Caribbean Sea; and northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands. The seafaring Taino people moved into the uninhabited southern Bahamas from Hispaniola and Cuba around the 7th century AD. These people came to be known as the Lucayans. There were an estimated 30,000+ Lucayans at the time of Columbus' arrival in 1492. Christopher Columbus's first landfall in the New World was on an island he named San Salvador (known to the Lucayans as Guanahani) which is generally accepted to be present-day San Salvador Island (also known as Watling Island) in the southeastern Bahamas. Here, Columbus made first contact with the Lucayans and exchanged goods with them. The origin of the name "Bahamas" is unclear. It may derive from the Spanish baja mar, meaning "shallow seas" or the Lucayan word for Grand Bahama Island, ba-ha-ma "large upper middle land".