On Lukumi Inclusion on YorùbáName.com
Lukumi/Lucumi is a version of Yorùbá that survived the Middle Passage and has continued to thrive in Latin America particularly in Cuba. It shares several attributes with standard Yorùbá in phonology and lexicography with mild differences in spelling and tone. You can read more about the differences and similarities here.
At YorùbáName.com, we are committed to an inclusive work that takes into account all variants of Yorùbá in Nigeria (Ijẹ̀ṣa, Ìjẹ̀bú, Ìlàjẹ, Ondo, etc), as well as other variants from Francophone West Africa (Benin, Togo) to Anglophone West Africa (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana) to Latin America (Brazil Cuba, Jamaica, etc) and even to Arabic. We’re always looking for lexicographers/scholars who are able to help facilitate this inclusion. Names from Benin Republic are already being added thanks to the work of Laila Le Guen and Dr. Moufoutaou Adjeran. (More about that here and here).
As from this week, users of our dictionary will notice new names common to Lukumi speakers in Cuba. Thanks to the work of Nathan Lugo who is a scholar of the language (and a practitioner of Yorùbá religion) in collaboration with our lexicography team, we are adding all Yorùbá-Lukumi names in pursuit of our desire for a comprehensive work useful for all Yorùbá speakers, descendants, and enthusiasts everywhere.
The spellings will be unfamiliar to local Yorùbá speakers (Obbá, Oddualá, Echudiná, Oyeboddé, etc) but to those who bear them in the diaspora, they’re properly spelled and marked in the tradition of their Yorùbá ancestors. At YorùbáName.com, you will be able to identify them by spelling and peculiar tone (accent) marking, and also by our geolocation tag foreign-general.
What our lexicographers are doing along with Cuban scholar Nathan Lugo is to ensure that variants of the name in West African Yorùbá are also listed, for the benefit of both diaspora users as well as continental ones. This complementary exchange will, hopefully, improve the quality of interaction between the two communities separated by hundreds of years of history, and a large body of water.
Thank you for this as well as your many other great jobs. A thought: Could you replace your current term, “nigerian Yoruba”, with West African Yoruba”? As you well know, the Yoruba’s traditional abode extends beyond colonial boundaries. As such we should ignore and transcend these boundaries (as well as the nations they demarcate) while discussing the Yoruba or other Africans.
Good observation. Thank you for your comments. It has been changed.
Hello, I believe we still need a methodof distinguishing the national varieties of the Yoruba language.
For instance, we have: British-English, American-English, Australian-English, Canadian-English etc. By the same token,we have got: Nigerian-Yoruba, Beninese-Yoruba, Cuban-Yoruba, representing the national varieties for Nigeria, Benin Republic, Cuba etc.
There is a town called ‘Ketou’ in Benin Republic, pronounced the same way as ‘Ketu’ in Lagos, Nigeria. However, note the difference in spelling according to the different Yoruba writing system for each country.
This should clarify things somewhat.