What is "antilles"

See also West Indies, Caribbean

The Antilles (; Antilles in French; Antillas in Spanish; Antillen in Dutch and Antilhas in Portuguese) are an archipelago bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the south and west, the Gulf of Mexico to the northwest, and the Atlantic Ocean to the north and east.

The Antillean islands are divided into two smaller groupings: the Greater Antilles, which includes the larger islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola (subdivided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and the Cayman Islands; and the Lesser Antilles, which contains the northerly Leeward Islands, the southeasterly Windward Islands, and the Leeward Antilles just north of Venezuela. The Lucayan Archipelago (consisting of the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands), though part of the West Indies, are generally not included among the Antillean islands.

Geographically, the Antillean islands are generally considered a subregion of North America. Culturally speaking, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico – and sometimes the whole of the Antilles – are included in Latin America, although some sources avoid this socio-economic oversimplification by using the phrase "Latin America and the Caribbean" instead (see Latin America, "In Contemporary Usage"). In terms of geology, the Greater Antilles are made up of continental rock, as distinct from the Lesser Antilles, which are mostly young volcanic or coral islands.

Antilles may refer to:

• Antilles, a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea
  • Greater Antilles
  • Lesser Antilles
    • Leeward Antilles
    • Netherlands Antilles
• Antilles Current, a warm water current
• Antilles Records, an American record label
• Antilles War, a war between the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of France during 1782
• Radio Antilles, a radio station founded in 1963, that was located on the island of Montserrat
• SS Antilles, a French ocean liner built in 1952 and wrecked in 1971
• SS Antilles (1907), an American passenger-cargo ship built in 1907 and sunk by a U-boat in 1917
• Wedge Antilles, a fictional Star Wars character