I asked about sources out of curiosity not to undermine what you said In a Jamaican context what you say is true from what I cited and some other reading I would say that Taino is preferable to Arawak for the Greater Antilles because it is more specific in that context Taino is used specifically for the Arawakan people of the northern Caribbean so it is a subset of the Arawakan people and thus not interchangeable Taino could be considered a single tribe within the Arawakan language family The Island Caribs were another as were the Lokono of the mainland The Arawakan language family is one of the largest in South America Brazil Peru Bolivia and throughout the Caribbean The term Taino is not to my knowledge used for groups outside of the northern Caribbean The Arawakan people of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico had the most sophisticated cultures the most powerful chiefdoms As far as I can tell it is to these groups the classic Taino plus their related neighbours the eastern Taino and the western Taino that they name Taino applied The point is not the word as such since it was probably not a word that they used for themselves except to proclaim themselves friendlies to the Spanish There was a distinct culture of the northern Caribbean before I looked it up I though the Lucayans of the Bahamas were not part of that group but I was wrong Words only work if they can be fit to real meaningful concepts The term Igneri has been used for the Island Arawaks who preceded the Island Caribs in the Lesser Antilles This group probably made up the basic substratum of the Island Carib population and gave rise to the Kalinago or women s language of the Island Caribs The men spoke either a Carib language or a Carib based pidgin but apparently it had a lot of Arawak words The traditional view of the Island Caribs as interlopers has been severely questioned in recent times One source separated out three theories of their origin The traditional one and the one I got in school etc was the Carib replacement model that the Caribs invaded and displaced the original Arawak population of the Lesser Antilles and were spreading northward at the time of Spanish contact Another one is the Arawak continuity model which says that the Arawaks of the Lesser Antilles acquired a Carib pidgin through trading with the Mainland Caribs The third is a reticulate model in which Mainland Caribs moved into the Lesser Antilles and merged with the Arawak population in a model comparable to the Norman conquest of England I got the impression that modern scholars leaned that way One source cited seventeenth century documents that refer to two groups of Caribs in Grenada the Galini probably Kali a Karinya or Mainland Caribs and the Cara bes Island Caribs In addition contemporary sources refer to the Taino of the Greater Antilles fleeing Spanish massacres and joining the Island Caribs In the Spanish period the Island Caribs changed from being enemies of the Puerto Rican Tainos to being their allies against the Spanish Main source Raiders and Traders Cara be Social and Political Networks at the Time of European Contact and Colonization in the Eastern Caribbean Ann Cody Holdren 1998 Ph D dissertation UCLA McGinnis s dissertation cited above has a lot of quotes from Columbus s journals and from other contemporary sources Arawak or aruaca as I mentioned comes from aru which was the Lokono word for cassava flour I am not a historian just trying to do my best to see what the primary literature says The use of the word Taino is standard for the Greater Antilles but whether it is accurate is another matter altogether McGinnis points out that Columbus was very selective in how he interpreted data if you were hostile then human limbs were proof you were Carib but if you were friendly then the heads he found in the village was funerary Of course the whole idea of the origin of the Caribs is controvertial But the traditional view is by no means accepted without question That s what makes history so exciting these days 23 40 12 Jan 2005 UTC