Anguilla is a small island in the Caribbean Sea. It belongs to the UK — a British overseas territory, not an independent country. The capital is The Valley. Only about sixteen thousand people live there (a 2014 count was 15,754), so it is quiet compared with famous holiday islands nearby. The name is not random: it was borrowed from Latin anguilla, “eel,” because the island is long and thin, like that fish. People go for beaches and a slower kind of holiday. English is the main language. Though actually, the messy part for learners is the map, not the beaches. This is not Angola in Africa, and it is not Anguilla the eel in a biology book — that Latin animal name is how the island got its shape-name, but in everyday English the fish is just called an eel. If you hear it in a quiz, picture a long British island in the Caribbean, with a tiny capital called The Valley.