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Oyinbo is a Yoruba word used to refer to white people.[1][2][3] The word is popular in Nigeria among other groups as well in a number of minor variations. Oyinbo is generally understood by most Nigerians and many Africans due to popularity of Nollywood and Nigerian pop culture.

The word is coined from the Yoruba translation of “peeled skin,” "lightened," or “skinless,” which translates “yin” – to scratch, and “bo” – to off/peel/lightened. the "O" starting the word "Oyinbo" is a pronoun. Hence, "Oyinbo" translates literally to "the person with a peeled-off or lightened skin".[4][5][6] Other variations of the term in the Yoruba language include Eyinbo, which is shortened to "Eebo", as well as Oinbo, and Oyibo.[7]

To identify Africans by their language groups, Sigismund Koelle documented how different africans said specific terms in his 1854 study Polyglotta Africana. One such term was White Man. His Yoruba sources included people from Ọta, Ẹgba, Okun, Ijẹbu, Ifẹ, Ondo, Itsẹkiri, and more, while his Igbo sources were from areas such as Isuama, Ishielu, Agbaja, Aro, and Mbofia. The Igbo respondents consistently used the term Onyọcha for White Man. In contrast, all the Yoruba participants stated their term was Òyìnbó.[8] These candid testimonies from the Igbo sources indicate that the term “oyinbo” or “oyibo” originated from the Yoruba and their neighboring groups.[9]

There are numerous other instances recorded by scholars in history acknowledging that, despite Oyinbo being used by many people in the modern times of southern nigeria, it finds it's origin in the Yoruba language. For instance, Ugo Nwokeji and Romanus Aboh in separate books came to the same conclusion, positing that the term "Oyibo" used by the Igbo is borrowed from the original Oyinbo used by Yoruba.[10][11]

Oyibo was also used in reference to people who are foreign or Europeanised, including Saros in the towns of Onitsha and Enugu in the late 19th and early 20th century.[12] Sierra Leonean missionaries, according to Ajayi Crowther, a Yoruba, and John Taylor, an Igbo, descendants of repatriated slaves, were referred to as oyibo ojii by the people of Onitsha.[13][14]

Olaudah Equiano, an African abolitionist, claimed in his 1789 narrative that the people in Essaka, Igboland, where he claimed to be from, used the term Oye-Eboe in reference to "Stout (strong, powerful), mahogany-coloured men from the south west of us". Vincent Carretta suggested that this might be an earlier version of the term Oyibo[15], however as he and Gloria Chuku later point out, Equiano's use of Oye-Eboe, was in reference to other Africans and not Caucasians. Gloria Chuku suggested that Equiano's use of Oye-Eboe is not linked to Oyibo, and that it is a reference to the generic term Onitsha and other more western Igbo people used to refer to other Igbo people.[16] Both Paul Lovejoy and Vincent Carretta identified Oye-Eboe as a reference to the Aro[17].

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Matthias Krings; Onookome Okome (2013). Global Nollywood: The Transnational Dimensions of an African Video Film Industry, African Expressive Cultures. Indiana University Press. p. 267. ISBN 9780253009425.
  2. ^ Toyin Falola; Ann Genova (2005). Yoruba Creativity: Fiction, Language, Life and Songs. Africa World Press. ISBN 9781592213368.
  3. ^ Elisabeth Bekers; Sissy Helff; Daniela Merolla (2009). Transcultural Modernities: Narrating Africa in Europe Volume 36 of Matatu (Göttingen) series, Journal for African Culture and Society. Rodopi. p. 208. ISBN 9789042025387.
  4. ^ Herman Bauman (14 May 2008). African Safari for Jesus. Xlibris Corporation. p. 31. ISBN 978-1-4628-2537-0.
  5. ^ Herman Bauman (4 November 2009). I Used to Think God Was Perfect, But... Xlibris Corporation. p. 160. ISBN 978-1-4628-2825-8.
  6. ^ Bowen, Rev. T. J. (May 1858). Grammar and Dictionary of the Yoruba language. Smithsonian Institution. p. 13.
  7. ^ Akpraise (2017-05-13). "The Origin Of The Word " Oyibo"". Akpraise.com. Retrieved 2020-05-27.
  8. ^ "Koelle's Polyglotta Africana - Concept White Man". polyglottaafricana.clld.org. Retrieved 2024-11-13.
  9. ^ DALBY, DAVID (2014-09-11), "Mel Languages in the Polyglotta Africana", African Language Review, Routledge, p. 144, ISBN 978-0-203-04287-8, retrieved 2024-11-13
  10. ^ Nwokeji, G. Ugo (2010). The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra: An African Society in the Atlantic World. Cambridge University Press. p. 218. ISBN 978-1139489546.
  11. ^ Aboh, Romanus (2018). Language and the Construction of Multiple Identities in the Nigerian Novel. African Books Collective. p. 88, 89. ISBN 978-1920033354.
  12. ^ Njoku, Raphael Chijoke (2013). African Cultural Values: Igbo Political Leadership in Colonial Nigeria, 1900–1996. Routledge. p. 20. ISBN 978-1135528201.
  13. ^ Lovejoy, Paul E. (2009). Identity in the Shadow of Slavery. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 61. ISBN 978-1441193964.
  14. ^ Okwu, Augustine Senan Ogunyeremuba (2010). Igbo Culture and the Christian Missions, 1857-1957. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 95. ISBN 978-0761848844.
  15. ^ Carretta, Vincent (2005). Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-made Man. University of Georgia Press. p. 15. ISBN 0820325716.
  16. ^ Gloria Chuku (2013). The Igbo Intellectual Tradition. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 45. ISBN 978-1137311290.
  17. ^ Lovejoy, Paul E. (2006). Autobiography and Memory: Gustavus Vassa, alias Olaudah Equiano, the African. Slavery & Abolition. p. 10.
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