Taíno

or Tai·no

[ tahy-noh ]

noun

, plural Taí·nos, (especially collectively) Taí·no

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

/ ˈtaɪnəʊ /

noun

1. -nos-no 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

Word History and Origins

Origin of Taíno¹

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

Matias, whose Indigenous Nations are Taino and Kichwa, said a more suitable day to honor Native people would be the “summer solstice, which is a powerful day for Indigenous people all over the world. It might be some sort of day that we recognize generally correlating with our connection to the planet.”

From Seattle Times

The Taíno Needle Science Institute is part of what Escobar calls a “guerrilla academy,” and the institute’s schedule reads like a revolutionary reboot of the Learning Annex: “chair yoga” sessions led by Margarita Pietri, the widow of the Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri; a performance by the Harlem proto-hip-hop pioneers the Last Poets; lectures like “Survival Underground” with former members of the Young Lords and Black Panthers.

From New York Times

That concept of “fugivity” is crucial, Escobar said, and is also reflected in the Taíno Needle Science Institute.

From New York Times

A second piece, “María Guabancex,” is named for the tantrum-prone Taino goddess of wind and chaos, whose destructive ire, sparked by climate change, is expressed as a furious sculptural whirl of ropes, cables and palm branches.

From New York Times