Who gave Jamaica its name?

Although the Taino referred to the island as Xaymaca, the Spanish gradually changed the name to Jamaica. In the so-called Admiral's map of 1507 the island was labeled as Jamaiqua and in Peter Martyr's work Decades of 1511, he referred to it as both Jamaica and Jamica.



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The majority of the population (90 per cent, 2006 Census) is of Jamaica is of West African origin. The rest are people of mixed heritage with combinations that include European-African, Afro-indigenous, Chinese-African and East Indian-African.

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Christopher Columbus, who first sighted the island in 1494, called it Santiago, but the original indigenous name of Jamaica, or Xaymaca, has persisted.

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