Hi, Prof. Marcus:
My name is Wilfredo Quintana Feliciano, I'm a retired teacher and I always remember the word Canicas for the marble ones in Puerto Rico, also we called them ''bolas de Corote" really they weren't marble,  but a cristal ball. The larger ones we used to hit the smaller ones in a game called Al Caldero; were called Corotes, so  the smaller ones were the size of the Chinnesse Chekers balls-game. Around 1945-60 Al Caldero game was a floor game in which you placed two or three balls by players in the Caldero "an eye shaped marked in the street or floor" then about six to eight feet away a line from which the game started and everyone throws their Corotes to hit and take out balls from the Caldero those out belonged to the ones taking them out, as far as you hit you continue shotting to them you fail and the next in turn continued or began shotting at the calderos rest of the balls there when all calderos balls were out you continued shotting at the players corotes to make them loose their corotes and so they couldn't play again with no corotes; I think that originally the marble idea to call them marble balls takes place in the concept that there were table games which were mostly played in marble stone tables, so it could have occured to pass the name of the marble tables for the balls too. Romans used to have marble balls for their marble table games. Probably it pass along to Spain in their vast conquests.