ANTILLES, a name that is usually, although by no means uniformly, applied to the whole of the West Indian Islands, with the exception of the Bahamas; it has also, on the one hand, been employed to designate smaller portions of the same group, and, on the other, it has been extended so as to comprehend the whole archipelago, inclusive of the Bahamas. The traditional derivation of the word Antilles itself from Antilla, a continent sunnosed to lie to the west of the Azores, and for which Cuba, or some other West Indian island, was mistaken, is too doubtful and too vague in its application to be of any value in determining the proper use of the term; the weight of authority seems to be in favour of the first acceptation. In this sense the Antilles have been divided into two groups :—the Greater Antilles, including Cuba, Jamaica, Hayti, and Porto Rico; and the Lesser Antilles, forming the remainder of the islands. See West Indies.