If you are flying over, to, or through the Caribbean — a region where language is as vibrant and diverse as its landscapes — have you ever wondered about the place names and words that fill Caribbean conversations?
Our region is a living linguistic laboratory where languages have been preserved, have converged, mingled, and transformed over centuries. Caribbean words have also travelled beyond the Caribbean for just as long.
Words are more than just static labels; they’re like living, breathing entities that evolve right alongside their users. New words pop up all the time to keep pace with our ever-changing world — the latest in technology and fashion, and other social shifts and movements.
Words know no borders. They travel just as easily across cultures — finding new homes, new pronunciations, and new meanings as they journey from one culture to the next. English, a language itself known for its eclectic mix, has been both a famous (or infamous) borrower and a lender.
Words have histories too.
Let’s start with place names. The name Caribbean (itself with two pronunciations, one with emphasis on the second syllable, the other on the third) is based on the Europeanised name for an Indigenous group (possibly the Kalina). And names like Aruba, The Bahamas, Bonaire, Carriacou, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, the Guyanas, Haiti, Jamaica, Saba, and Suriname, among others, all have Indigenous roots — not to mention names aplenty for rivers, mountains, bays, and much more.
Many territories had more than one recorded Indigenous name — depending on the group doing the naming and the recording. Two different groups may even have shared one name for the same place.
Modern Trinidad & Tobago, for example, might have been known as Chalibaboue & Aloubaéra in Island Carib (an Iñeri Maipurean/Arawakan language) — or Kairi & Urupaina in Karìna auran (a Northern Galibi Cariban language). Tobago itself is often assumed to be of Indigenous origin, but some theories have it that the name came from Spanish with Arabic roots.
Martinique’s two known names are Madinina, “land of flowers” (of Kalinago origin); and Jouanacaera, “land of iguanas” (from a Cariban language).
The language of the Indigenous people of the Lesser Antilles — called Kalinago for the men and Kalifuna for the women by missionary priest Raymond Breton — is often now referred to as Kalinago.
Take a moment to consider the words we use every day in a range of western European languages. Did you know that when you mention agouti, barbecue, canoe, cassava, cay, guava, hammock, hurricane, mangrove, pawpaw, potato, savannah, you’re using words that originated with the Taíno people who spoke Arawakan (or Maipurean) languages? These names all have to do with natural phenomena, like flora and fauna; or topography and weather patterns; or cultural practices.
At the time of European conquest and contact in the 15th century, the Taíno and other Indigenous nations numbered up to two million, and they lived in what are now The Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic today), Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and beyond.
The Taíno are the Indigenous people of the Greater Antilles, designated by Europeans as Arawaks and later described as Taíno to distinguish them from the Arawaks or Lokono of mainland South America.
Both preservation and innovation are hallmarks of Caribbean languages today
When we think of the legacy they gave us in terms of flora, often the same plant carries multiple names — reflecting the diverse linguistic heritage of the region. Cassava is Arawakan and manioc is Tupí, two completely different language families. Corn comes from a Germanic word meaning grain or seed, but Arawakan gave us maize — now we use corn here for maize. The name roucou is interesting because we got a Tupí name, at least in Trinidad; annatto is from Cumaná (a Cariban language); and achiote is from Nahuatl, an Uto-Aztecan language.
Of course, the story is never that simple. Some of those words above may have had other Indigenous influences, and many of them came through either French or Spanish — or both — to be later adopted into English.
Speaking of English, there are English words that we think we made up or have “corrupted”, yet many of them are regional English retentions — some obsolete, old-fashioned/archaic, or regional.
Some examples are: hoss (horse), mines (mine), onliest (only), to carry someone (to take), to full (to fill), to grater (to grate), to learn (to teach), to out (as in, to put out a light), to loss (to lose), to leff (to leave), nosehole (nostril), to study (to ponder), and from I was a child (since I was a child).
Many of these words no longer enjoy the neutral status they once did, and their users are often (mis)judged as being antiquated or even ignorant, based on how others feel English should be.
English came to the Caribbean in 1623, not long after Shakespeare’s passing, and the Bard would definitely recognise some Caribbean words, pronunciations, and meanings in Caribbean varieties of English and in Caribbean English-related Creoles.
Dutch and French also came to the Caribbean in the early 1600s, and both those languages have also left their mark on Caribbean speech. Examples of regional (and archaic) European French persisting in Caribbean French and in Caribbean French-related Creoles include anse and morne (also in Canada) for plage (beach) and colline (hill), and ramager (to sing like a bird).
Spanish, of course, came to the Americas in 1492. Like English of the 17th and 18th centuries in the Caribbean, the 15th and 16th century varieties of Spanish have also impacted Caribbean Spanish in ways that modern Spain has diverged from.
Portuguese has impacted Papiamentu/Papiamento spoken in the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao), and Saramaccan spoken in Suriname. Other European languages, such as Portuguese in Guyana — which was not among the colonising languages — have come to the Caribbean and have left some traces behind, mainly in personal names. So both preservation and innovation are hallmarks of Caribbean languages today.
In addition to Amerindian and European names and general words, African names, words, and calques — especially from the Atlantic-Congo language family — are very much part of Caribbean speech, not to mention the famous steups (an expression of disapproval also known as kiss teeth or suck teeth, and tchip in French).
The languages in question include languages such as Efik, Ibibio, Igbo, Kimbundu, Koongo, Yoruba (from the same general language family); and Akan, Éwé, Fon, Gãa, Gbe, and Mande (from the same language family).
We have words such as accra (a saltfish and flour fritter), bèlè (a dance form), bobol (corruption), dingolay (gyrate), gangang (grandmother), jook and chook (pierce; stab), kalinda (a dance/martial artform), macaque (monkey), mook (also English), nennen (godmother), soucouyant (a skin-shedding woman in folklore who turns into a blood-sucking ball of fire), sousou (a community savings system), tabanca (unrequited love), yampi and zombie/jumbie, and for body parts like toti (penis) and bonda (buttocks).
There are words we think we made up or have “corrupted”, yet many of them are regional English retentions — some obsolete, old-fashioned/archaic, or regional
The Caribbean has also adopted Asian languages, particularly Bhojpuri and Cantonese. Indic words in sociocultural domains like religion, music, food, kinship, and behaviour have come to us from Indo-European languages such as Bhojpuri and Hindi.
Various food and food-related items persist, and well-known words for them include aloo (potato), choka (mashed vegetables), bilna (a rolling pin), baigan (melongene, eggplant, or aubergine), bhandhania (culantro), and many more. People eat potato chips but also aloo pies, and can talk about buying melongene to make baigan choka in the same sentence.
Cantonese food names such as chow mein, pakchoi (also bok choy), pow (also bao), and see yow (soy sauce) are still with us; as are games like whe-whe; and terms like hakwai (someone born of mixed Chinese and African ancestry).
New, lasting Caribbean-born words abound too — many for food, music, and beyond. We have doubles, horn, lime, pelau, soca, wine from Trinidad & Tobago; and diss, dub, irie, jerk, patty, ska, wa a gwaan, and more from Jamaica. More transient slang words are always being created, and we watch and wait to see if they will stand the test of time.
Words are a source of amazement, amusement and enlightenment, and reveal much about cultures, history and beyond. Language change is normal and should be embraced. We continue to contribute to the official languages of our region.
Learn more
Check out the Oxford English Dictionary online for a carnival of words from the Caribbean to the wider English-using world.
Some other solid Caribbean dictionaries (solid in more ways than one) include those edited by Richard and Jeannette Allsopp for Caribbean English in general; John Holm and Alison Shilling for The Bahamas; Paul Crosbie and team for Belize; Frederic Cassidy and Robert Le Page for Jamaica; Sylviane Telchid for Martinique and Guadeloupe; Raphaël Confiant for Martinique; and Lise Winer for Trinidad & Tobago.
And we know that St Lucia has two of everything — two airports, two pitons, two languages, two Nobel prize winners, and two dictionaries! One is by Jones Mondésir and Lawrence Carrington, the other by David Frank.
More dictionaries have been recently published, and glossaries abound — but nothing replaces a good dictionary, whether in print or online. So get that Caribbean dictionary and enjoy a window to the past, with an eye on the present and future.