Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, 234 kilometres in length and as much as 80 kilometres in width situated in the Caribbean Sea. It is about 620 kilometres northeast of the Central American mainland, 145 kilometres south of Cuba, and 190 kilometres west of the island of Hispaniola, on which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are situated. Its indigenous Arawakan speaking Taíno inhabitants named the island Xaymaca, meaning the "Land of Wood and Water", or the "Land of Springs Formerly a Spanish possession known as Santiago, it later became the British West Indies Crown colony of Jamaica. It is the third most populous anglophone country in the Americas, after the United States and Canada.