Jamaica is the third most populous Anglophone country in the Americas, after the United States and Canada. It is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, situated in the Caribbean Sea, east of the Central American mainland, south of Cuba, and west of the island of Hispaniola on which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are situated. Its indigenous Arawakan speaking Taíno inhabitants named the island Xaymaca, meaning either the "land of springs," or the "land of wood and water." Formerly a Spanish possession known as Santiago, then the British West Indies Crown colony of Jamaica, the country's population is composed mainly of the descendants of former African slaves.
