The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Lucayan Archipelago.
The subregion includes all the Antilles islands, the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in the North Atlantic Ocean. Nowadays, the term West Indies is often interchangeable with the term the Caribbean.
However, the latter may also include some Central and South American mainland countries which have Caribbean coastlines, such as Belize, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, and the Atlantic island nations of Trinidad and Tobago and Bermuda, both of which are geographically distinct from the three primary island groups, but culturally related.