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 Caribbeanbefore 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 womens language of the Island Caribs  The men spoke either a Carib language or a Caribbased 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 KaliaKarinya or Mainland Caribs and the Carabes 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 Carabe Social and Political Networks at the Time of European Contact and Colonization in the Eastern Caribbean  Ann Cody Holdren  PhD dissertation UCLA McGinniss dissertation  cited above  has a lot of quotes from Columbuss 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  Thats what makes history so exciting these days