___ Political Map of Central America and the Caribbean (West Indies)

The West Indies are a chain of islands that extends from the Florida peninsula to the coast of Venezuela and lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
They consist of three main island groups: the Greater and Lesser Antilles and the Bahamas, with Bermuda lying further to the north. Originally inhabited by Arawak and Carib Indians, the islands were visited by Columbus in 1492 and named by him in the belief that he had reached the coast of India. The islands now consist of a number of independent states and British, French, Dutch, and US dependencies.

Greater Antilles - the Greater Antilles comprise the large Caribbean islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola island with Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico (USA).
Lesser Antilles - the Lesser Antilles comprise of the chain of the smaller Caribbean islands, include the Virgin Islands (with British Virgin Islands (UK), and U.S. Virgin Islands (USA)) , the Leeward, and the Windward islands (see below), as well as various small islands within the Venezuelan archipelago to the north of Venezuela, sometimes referred to as the Leeward Antilles, (including Aruba, and the islands of Bonaire and Curaçao formerly Netherlands Antilles, also known as the ABC islands which are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands).

Leeward Islands - are the northern part of the Lesser Antilles. The group includes Guadeloupe, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Montserrat.
Windward islands - a group of islands in the eastern Caribbean Sea, they constitute the southern part of the Lesser Antilles and include Martinique, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Barbados, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada. The name refers to their position further upwind than the Leeward Islands, in terms of the prevailing southeastern winds.