The Bahamas in other languages: exonyms, Nassau, districts, ISO codes

From Lucayan Bahama to the islands of Bahama

English is the only official language, so the country has no second native script: its own name is the Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, one of two country names whose short form starts with the article, the other being The Gambia. The word goes back to the Lucayan name of a single island, Grand Bahama, which the Turin map of about 1523 is the first to record. The explanation from Spanish baja mar, shallow sea, often found in travel guides, is a folk etymology.

Other languages handle the islands in two ways. Most keep a plural or a bare name: Spanish and French Bahamas, Polish and Czech Bahamy, Lithuanian Bahamai and Turkish Bahamalar. A second group names the islands outright: Latin Insulae Bahamenses, Swahili Visiwa vya Bahama, Icelandic Bahamaeyjar, Russian Багамские острова (Bagamskije ostrova) and Hebrew איי־בהאמה (Iye-Bahāmah). Irish and Scottish Gaelic put the article in front, Na Bahámaí and Na Bahàmas.

Scripts without the h sound in that place shift it. Russian, Kazakh and Turkmen write a g, Багамы, while Ukrainian and Bulgarian keep h with х or г; Greek uses Μπαχάμες (Mpaȟámes) with μπ for b. Nassau travels with few changes: Arabic ناساو (Nāsāw), Hebrew נסאו (Nasaʾū), Japanese ナッソー (Nassō) and Latvian Naso.

Districts since 1996: what ISO recorded

The district map is young. The local government system created in 1996 replaced the older districts, and ISO 3166-2 caught up with Newsletter II-2 of 30 June 2010, which swapped the 21 old codes for the new districts. A correction in December 2011 removed Green Turtle Cay from the code list. In November 2018 ISO added New Providence with the code BS-NP as an island, since the capital's island stands outside the district system.

Some centres serve two districts. Marsh Harbour is the centre of Central Abaco and of Hope Town, Cooper's Town of North Abaco, Grand Cay and Green Turtle Cay, and Kemp's Bay of South Andros and Mangrove Cay. Wikipedia's Districts of the Bahamas now lists Black Point as Exuma Cays and Hope Town as Great Abaco Cays; ISO still used the older names on 28 October 2026.