Taíno

American  

[tahy-noh] / ˈtaɪ noʊ /

Or Taino

noun

plural

Taínos,

plural

Taíno

1. a member of an Indigenous Arawakan tribe of the Caribbean: the Taíno once dominated the populations of Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, but today the Taíno line survives as part of mixed ethnicity.

2. the Arawakan language spoken by the early Taíno people.

---

Taino British  

/ ˈtaɪnəʊ /

noun

1. a member of an American Indian people of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas

2. the language of this people, belonging to the Arawakan family

---

Etymology

Origin of Taíno

First recorded in 1835–40; from Taíno: literally, “the noble, men of the good”

Example Sentences

The 65th was designated in 1920; its nickname, adopted during the Korean War, stems from Borikén, the Indigenous Taíno name for Puerto Rico.

From National Geographic • Nov. 10, 2023

Carucci’s mother, a freestyle dancer raised in the Bronx, is Puerto Rican with Taíno and African ancestry.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 15, 2023

Dessalines and his victorious forces thereafter renamed their country Haiti, a term meaning mountainous that derived from the Taíno language of the precolonial people.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022

On the island of Hispaniola, for example, where both the Spanish and the French established sugar plantations, the native Taíno population was at least several hundred thousand strong when Columbus arrived in 1492.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022

Sergio tells us that the Taíno were the indigenous population on the island.

From "Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish" by Pablo Cartaya