Origins of the names of Towns and Villages in Trinidad

1. ARIMA is the Amerindian word for “water”. It was so named as the village was built around a river.
2. AROUCA is based around the word “Arauca”, which is the true name for the so-called Arawak.
3. The adjacent beach, BALANDRA, is named after a type of boat that docked there.
4. BARATARIA is possibly named after a prank involving a fake island of the same name in Cervantes’ Don Quixote. “Barato” itself means cheap.
5. BICHE is named after the French word for “beast” because it was first started off as a settlement for hunters.
6. The settlement was first called Ladies River, but later on a French surveyor named it after the French term for “washer-woman” -BLANCHISSEUSE.
7. When boats were docked in Port-of-Spain, they were carried along the bay to be cleaned. This was called “careening” and so sprang the name CARENAGE.
8. CAURA was based off of an Amerindian word “Cuara” which meaning is lost now. The settlers of Caura were said to be so lazy and secluded that their village never thrived and was left mostly abandoned. A CORRECTION MADE BY A DESCENDANT FROM THE CAURA AREA: Caura ancestors were not lazy. They carried their church brick by brick to the Lopinot Valley. A dam scheduled there was never built and the Government never gave them back their land.
9. When the Spanish sailors arrived at this coast, they noticed many tall cedar trees. And they called it the Spanish word for cedars, CEDROS.
10. CHAGUANAS is named after the group of indigenous peoples that lived there, known as the Chaguanes. Smaller villages in Chaguanas were so named to positively motivate its early settlers - Felicity, Endeavour, Enterprise.