Anguilla
British overseas territory in the Caribbean
Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory of the Caribbean region in the North Atlantic Ocean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin. The territory consists of the main island of Anguilla, approximately 16 miles (26 kilometres) long by 3 miles (5 km) wide at its widest point, together with a number of much smaller islands and cays with no permanent population. The territory's capital is The Valley. The total land area of the territory is 35 square miles (91 km2), with a population of approximately 15,753 in 2021.
Etymology
The Indigenous Arawakan name for the island was Malliouhana.
In reference to the island's shape, the Italian anguilla, meaning "eel" (in turn, from the Latin diminutive of anguis, "snake") was used as its name. Anguillan tradition holds that Christopher Columbus named the island.
History
Anguilla was first settled by Indigenous American peoples who migrated from South America. The earliest Native American artefacts found on Anguilla have been dated to around 1300 BC; remains of settlements date from AD 600.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Anguilla” is british overseas territory in the Caribbean. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Anguilla, British and overseas, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25228. VIAF identifies the subject as 149528622. The Library of Congress control number is n81008538. Authority coordinates are 18.227, -63.049. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2021 and 1300.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anguilla” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.