Arawak language
Long before Christopher Columbus first set foot on the capital island of Grand Turk during his discovery voyage of the new world in 1492, the islands of the Turks and Caicos were inhabited by Taino and Lucayan peoples. These original settlers left a rich heritage of seafaring, salt raking and farming, which still lingers on today. Words such as "canoe", Caribbean and "caicos" are derived from the Arawak language. Even the name of the country comes from these earliest inhabitants. Turks is a reference to the indigenous Turk's head cactus and Caicos is from the Lucayan term "caya hico" meaning string of islands, words which entered the natives' language through an early colonist, Bernard Caicos.