Buckaroo: supposed African origin

Imran Ghory imran at BITS.BRIS.AC.UK
Thu Mar 13 20:19:59 UTC 2003


On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, Gerald Cohen wrote:
>
>      Holloway and Vass almost certainly relied on some earlier source
> for their African origin of "buckaroo/buckra." One possibility is
> David Dalby's "Black through White: Patterns of Communication in
> African and the New World (Hans Wolff Memorial Lecture, 1969). I'll
> check this in the next day or two.

The original source apppears to be the AS article _The Etymology of
'Buckaroo'_ by Julian Mason (American Speech, Feb 1960, pp. 51-55) which
derives the word from the Gullah word buckra (white man).

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran



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