Oyibo

Oyinbo is a Yoruba word used to refer to early Caucasians. In the early 1470s, the first Portuguese berth in Eko, a Yorubaland, presently called Lagos. The word was first used by the Yoruba to describe the Portuguese they saw and later extend to all Europeans who arrived at their shore thereafter. Many years later, the word is used for anyone who is influenced by European tradition, customs, and culture, especially the Enslaved returnees. Nowadays, Oyinbo is generally used to refer to a person of European descent, African people perceived to not be culturally Yoruba or nowadays every other people of any race considered light-skinned. The word is generally understood by most Nigerians and many Africans.

Etymology

The word is coined from the Yoruba translation of “peeled skin,” "lightened," or “skinless,” which, in Yoruba, translates “yin” – to scratch “bo” – to off/peel/lightened. the "O" starting the word "Oyinbo" is a pronoun. Hence, "Oyinbo" literally translates to "the person with a peeled-off or lightened skin". Other variations of the term in the Yoruba language include Eyinbo, which is usually shorted as "Eebo".

Oyinbo is also used in reference to people who are foreign or Europeanised, including Saros in the Igbo towns of Onitsha and Enugu in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sierra Leonean missionaries, according to Ajayi Crowther, a Yoruba, and John Taylor, an Igbo, descendants of repatriated slaves, were referred to as ''oyibo ojii'' () or "native foreigners" by the people of Onitsha in the late 19th century.

Olaudah Equiano, an African abolitionist, claimed in his 1789 narrative that the people in ''Essaka'', Igboland, where he claimed to be from, had used the term ''Oye-Eboe'' in reference to "red men living at a distance" which may possibly be an earlier version of ''oyibo''. Equiano's use of ''Oye-Eboe'', however, was in reference to other Africans and not white men. Gloria Chuku suggests 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 westerly Igbo people referred to other Igbo people. R. A. K. Oldfield, a European, while on the Niger River near Aboh in 1832 had recorded locals calling out to him and his entourage "Oh, Eboe! Oh, Eboe!", and linked to modern 'oyibo'.

Related

In Central and West Africa the name for a person of European descent is ''Toubab''.

In Ghana the word used for a 'white' person or foreigner is 'Obroni' in the local languages, those of the Akan family.

References

{{White people terms

Nigerian culture
African people of European descent
European diaspora in Africa
Yoruba words and phrases