Honduras

Where the name comes from

Honduras is Spanish for “depths”, after the deep waters off the northern coast.

First people

Maya and other Indigenous communities lived here, and Copán was a major Maya city.^1,2

Known for

Honduras is known for bananas: in the early 1900s, foreign banana companies gained huge areas of land, railways and influence on its Caribbean coast.³

Outside contact

Spain settled at Trujillo in 1525, and the Garifuna arrived in 1797, linking the coast to the wider Caribbean.¹

The modern country

Independence from Spain in 1821 was followed by leaving the Central American federation in 1838.¹