OT query: Etymology of Brazilian Portuguese "banzo"

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

    A colleague has asked me for the etymology of Brazilian Portuguese "banzo"--a term possibly of African origin.
An item on the term appears at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banzo, and below my signoff I reproduce an item I found in Google.  Would anyone perhaps know of a specialist in African languages who could possibly say just which African language banzo came from (+ its etymology)? Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Gerald Cohen


http://experts.about.com/e/s/sa/Saudade.htm


Banzo

In Brazilian Portuguese, the word Banzo is also similar to saudades but it refers to the morbid saudades felt by a black slave towards his culture. In the common use, banzo means saudade from one own's culture and homeland, as opposed to a loved one, a family member, a moment in time, etc.

The Houaiss Portuguese dictionary defines banzo as "the psychological process caused by the removal from culture that put black slaves from Africa, transported to distant lands, into an initial state of arousal followed by impulses of rage and destruction and then a deep nostalgia that induced apathy, starving and, quite often, madness or death." Although the dictionary expands the definition to a psychological process, the cause is clearly saudades from one's culture.

Banzo is used in a manner that is a little different from how you would use an emotion word. You might say that you feel banzo, but more often people say that they have banzo, that they are banzo or that they are feeling the banzo. When you feel banzo, it is almost like an external emotion that comes to you as an outside spiritual entity that incorporates on you.

The word is probably from an african origin by its sound and certainly not of latin origin. The use of the emotion as an spirit that lands on you might have come along with this etimological origin.

It seems that due to historical coincidences Brazil has 2 words for this specific emotion of longing and missing: saudades and banzo. Semantically, banzo is more specific than Saudades. So that if you feel banzo you also feel saudades but vice versa.

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