Buckaroo: supposed African origin

[Salikoko S. Mufwene]

On Thursday, March 13, 2003 8:30 PM, Herbert Stahlke wrote:

| I don't know what the distribution of mbakara/buckra terms would have been
| east of the Niger during the Atlantic slave trade era, but in the late 20th
| c. buckra was fairly widespread in that area, commonly used by Igbos,
| coastal and delta peoples, as well as Efik and Ibibio, so the filter for
| West Africans in South Carolina at the time probably has to be widened
| beyond Efik.

       It's useful to know that the term has had such wide currency in that
particular part of Africa. That kind of information is generally lacking
from the literature that has argued for the (exclusive) African etymology
of "buckra". On the other hand, the date of "late 20th c." suggests
primarily that the term "buckra" has also been used in part of the world.
It's another story whether it was used earlier in the 17th or 18th century
or indigenous to the area. It's not clear to me whether Herb is saying that
the form used there is precisely "buckra" or any other variant, like
"mbakara" (usually cited in the literature). That can make a lot of
difference in the search for the etymology of the Gullah term. Incidentally
the Jamaican pronunciation is not identical, as Jamaican Creole does not
have schwa not the "carrot" vowel of "buck".

| One of the more enthusiastic supporters of African etymologies has been
| David Dalby. He wrote a well known article for the London Times sometime in
| the 60s, I think, in which he proposed African etymologies for, among
| others, jazz, jam, honky, okay, cat, hep, hip, hepcat, etc. Some of these,
| notably "okay", have been pretty well debunked, but I've wondered about a
| couple of things. First, how much influence has Dalby had on popular
| thinking about African etymologies?

       I don't know. I have not seen many citations of him in connection to
these African etyma.

|Second, most times that I see African
| etymologies mentioned it is to attack them. Is there a bias against African
| etymologies perhaps because of the difficulty of documenting them or for
| other reasons?

      That may just be Herb's impression, based on what he has read. The
questions I have seen or raised myself are mostly about those terms that do
not seem particularly motivated. (And raising questions doesn't entail
rejecting those particular etymologies, of course.) There hasn't been much
fuss over terms such as "okra", "goober", "gumbo", and the like. Recent
creations in some particular registers are also curious, especially because
they have been coined after influence from African languages had become
almost impossible or by speakers who just hardly knew any African language.
I also happen to believe that there must be a lot of African influence in
AAVE and New World creoles, but the question is really what's the nature of
that influence. It has not always been where/what it is claimed to be.

Sali.

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Salikoko S. Mufwene                    s-mufwene at uchicago.edu
Distinguished Service Professor
University of Chicago                    773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924
Department of Linguistics
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mufwene
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