Nicaragua

Nicaragua (a country in Central America)

“Los detenidos eran “de México, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia y Honduras”, de acuerdo con la publicación de HSI Tampa.”

Related: nica, nicaragüense, nicaragüeño

Unknown. One theory is that it was coined by Spanish colonists based upon the name of the local chief at that time, Classical Nahuatl Nicarao (“Nicarao”) + agua (“water”). Another is that it may have meant ‘surrounded by water’ in an indigenous language. (This could either be a reference to its two large freshwater lakes, Lake Nicaragua and Lake Managua, or to the fact that it bounded on the east and the west by oceans.)