![]() Language experts say the word may come from the word nzamba – a word that now means “forest” in Kongo, a language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo and Angola. After his death, his name became a synonym for “huge.”īut as early as the 1820s, jumbo was a slang term used to describe a big, clumsy person, animal or thing. At his largest, he stood 3.6 meters tall. In 1882, the zoo sold him to a famous American circus. ![]() His captors brought him to France and sold him to a botanical garden. Historical accounts say Jumbo was captured as a baby elephant in East Africa in 1861. Jumbo was the name of an African bull elephant that was a zoo animal and a circus performer.Īn 1882 advertisement for a circus called P.T. The word came into popular American usage in an interesting way. In Washington, D.C., for example, Jumbo Slice is the name of a popular late-night pizza place that sells very, very large pieces of pizza. Today, the word can be found in many places where products are sold: supermarkets, online stores and even restaurants. In English, the word jumbo is an adjective that means “very large for its type.” Then, in 1633, an herbalist in Britain sold the first banana to reach Europe at his store.Īlong with food names, English has borrowed other kinds of words from African languages. The Portuguese began banana plantations in the Caribbean islands and Brazil. In the late 1500s, Portuguese and Spanish colonists took the fruit with them from Africa to the Americas and brought along its African name. One Arabic word for finger or toe is banan. How the fruit reached Africa from Asia is more of a mystery, although many reports say Arab traders may have brought them there. Recent research shows that Africans began harvesting this fruit at least 4,500 years ago. Many historians say bananas probably first grew in Southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea around 6,000 years ago. The word "banana" is believed to be of Wolof origin. The word was used throughout the American South in the 19th century, with the first known English usage in 1833.Īs Holloway’s paper explains, “Union soldiers fighting on southern soil during the Civil War found southern peanuts both tasty and filling.” They even made a song about it called “Eating Goober Peas.” The American English word goober once commonly meant peanut. Our next food name with African origins is goober. Interestingly, the word gumbo once meant simply “okra.” The original word was ki ngombo, from Mbundu, a language of Angola. Today, okra is still a key part of Creole cooking, especially its most famous dish: gumbo. During colonial times, African, European and Native American cultures mixed to form what would become Creole culture. In the American state of Louisiana, okra has been used for centuries to thicken stews and soups. The dish has an okra and tomato sauce base and typically contains seafood, sausage, rice and spices. Gumbo is considered the official dish of Louisiana. In Fulani, the word is nyami and it means “to eat.” In Twi, the word is anyinam. ![]() Two languages spoken there have similar versions of the word. American supermarkets are largely responsible for the confusion they often mark yams as sweet potatoes. ![]() What many Americans call a yam is actually a sweet potato. Yams are long, starchy vegetables with white, reddish or purple flesh. The yam was the most common food fed to enslaved Africans on ships traveling to the Americas. The foods included rice and other grains, okra, yams, different kinds of beans and peanuts.Īnd, as we will discuss today, some of the food names later became part of the English language. Slave ships carried these crops as food for enslaved Africans during the long voyage. UNESCO calls the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade the "biggest deportation in history" and notes that millions of Africans were torn from their homes, deported to the American continent and sold as slaves. ![]()
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