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‘LUCUMÍ’, ‘TERRANOVA’, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE YORUBA NATION*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2015

HENRY B. LOVEJOY  and
OLATUNJI OJO
HENRY B. LOVEJOY
Affiliation:
McMaster University
OLATUNJI OJO
Affiliation:
Brock University, St Catharines
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Abstract

The etymology of ‘Lucumí’ and ‘Terranova’, ethnonyms used to describe Yoruba-speaking people during the Atlantic slave trade, helps to reconceptualize the origins of a Yoruba nation. While there is general agreement that ‘Lucumí’ refers to the Yoruba in diaspora, the origin of the term remains unclear. We argue ‘Lucumí’ was first used in the Benin kingdom as early as the fifteenth century, as revealed through the presence of Olukumi communities involved in chalk production. The Benin and Portuguese slave trade extended the use of ‘Lucumí’ to the Americas. As this trade deteriorated by 1550, ‘Terranova’ referred to slaves captured west of Benin's area of influence, hence ‘new land’. By the eighteenth century, ‘Nagô’ had replaced ‘Lucumí’, while the ‘Slave Coast’ had substituted ‘Terranova’ as terms of reference. This etymology confirms the collective identification of ‘Yoruba’ and helps trace the evolution of a transnational identity.

Keywords

Nigeriaethnicityidentityprecolonialslave trade
Type
In Search of Precolonial Identity
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , November 2015 , pp. 353 - 372
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

Special thanks to Nielson Bezerra, Rina Cacéres, María Camila Díaz Casas, David Eltis, Manolo Florentino, Alejandro de la Fuente, Walter Hawthorne, Linda Heywood, Robin Law, Francis Martinez Otero, Ramón Alejandro Montoya, Pablo Sierra, John Thornton, Uyilawa Usuanlele, David Wheat, and this journal's anonymous readers for helping locate references and/or providing insightful comments on earlier drafts. Lovejoy's research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post Doctoral Fellowship (Award 756-2012-0715-B99). Authors' email: henlovejoy@gmail.com and oojo@brocku.ca

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41 Egharevba, Short History, 25–9; R. E. Bradbury and P. C. Lloyd, The Benin Kingdom and the Edo-Speaking Peoples of South-Western Nigeria (London, 1957), 63–4.

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66 Spelling variations of Lucumí include: ‘Lucamee’, ‘Alkomij’, ‘Alkomijsh’, ‘Ulkuma’, ‘Ulkami’, ‘Licomin’, ‘Loucomi’, ‘Locomin’, ‘Loucoumy’, ‘Loucomy’, ‘Laconie’, ‘Lacomie’, ‘Concomi’, ‘Alguemy’, ‘Laucommis’, ‘Ahcomi’, and ‘Alcomi’. See Law, ‘Ethnicity’.

67 In attempts to locate references of ‘Lucumí’ and ‘Terranova’ in Brazil, none were identified clearly, although there were examples for ‘Ardra’ and ‘Mina’. Emails with Nielson Bezerra, Manolo Florentino, Walter Hawthorne, Linda Heywood, James Sweet, and John Thornton, 31 Oct.–10 Nov. 2014. According to Heywood, Thornton, and Sierra, there was an obscure reference from Bahia in 1611 to ‘nocumí’, while ‘nucumí’ appears in records in Puebla de Los Angeles in the 1630s. Whether or not this term is an obscure reference to ‘Lucumí’ is tentative.

68 A. Sandoval, Naturaleza, Policia Sagrada i Profana, Costumbres i Ritos, Disciplina i Catechismo Evangelico de todos Etiopes (Sevilla, 1627), 5v and 59.

69 In nineteenth-century Cuba, there were 175 different Lucumí subgroups (although many were variations of the same term). See J. Guanche, Africanía y Etnicidad en Cuba (Habana, 2009), 217–21.

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71 Our underline for emphasis. See Sandoval, Naturaleza, 59. For other interpretations of these terms see Hair, ‘Ethnolinguistic’, 248n65; Law, ‘Early’, 251; and Law, Slave Coast, 118–23. Among these designations, Sandoval probably borrowed the terms ‘Mosiacos’, ‘Agares’, and ‘Iabus’ from Manuel de Figueiredo and possibly Dierik Ruÿters, who likely obtained their data from Pacheco Pereira. See M. Figueiredo, Roteiro e navegação das Indias Occidentais Ilhas, Antilhas do mar oceano occidental… (Lisboa, 1609); Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo, 72–3; and Dierik Ruÿters, Toortse der zee-vaert… (Vlissinghen, 1623).

72 Sandoval, Naturaleza, 65v.

73 Ibid.

74 M. H. Stewart, Borgu and Its Kingdoms: A Reconstruction of a Western Sudanese Polity (Queenston, 1993), 246.

75 Sandoval, Naturaleza, 65v–6.

76 J. Adams, Remarks on the Country Extending from Cape Palmas to the River Congo (London, 1823), 38.

77 Johnson, The History, 104–9.

78 I. A. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and its Neighbours (Cambridge, 1967); Law, Allada; Law, Oyo; Ryder, Benin.