A curious debate is going on about the group name of the Yoruba nation, the name ‘Yoruba’. All sorts of strange and fanciful things are being said about this name. Also, many people are calling on me to intervene in the debate. I therefore hereby intervene. But I cannot participate in the more flippant levels of debate over this or any matter; I can only make known the results of my serious research. I might add that what I reveal here is a small peep into a very important body of research on the Yoruba nation, a body of research that will, hopefully, soon appear as a book on the profile of the Yoruba nation.

In modern times, the Yorùbá people in Nigeria have exhibited a remarkable degree and quality of unity as a people. Such strong unity is engendered primarily by their common love of, and pride in, their culture, their strong emphasis on development and modernization, and in their civilizational achievements in history and in modern times. It is also reinforced by their common identity with such ideals as love of freedom, respect for the individual, accountability of leadership and governance, the servanthood of rulers, religious tolerance and accommodation, hospitality towards all other peoples, tenacity in fighting for ideals, and a unique fixation, as a people, on progress in all facets of modern development and transformation.

However, the question is sometimes raised in modern times whether the Yorùbá did have a common national name for themselves in their early history – before modern times (specifically before the mid-19th century). The question how long in the past a people have had a common group name is, of itself, not a major or important question. Worldwide, many a nation in its early history had no common group name, though its members roughly recognized themselves as belonging to the group and as different from others beyond the group. However, in the context of the kinds of inter-ethnic relationships that are characteristic of Nigeria’s political and intellectual life, the question about lack of an early group name is repeatedly raised about the Yorùbá. The intention of such questions, often, is to cast some aspersion on Yorùbá claims and demonstrations of unity as a nation in Nigeria today. For instance, Idris S. Jimada, a Nupe author, in his book The Nupe and the Origins and Evolution of the Yorùbá, c.1275-1897, attaches interesting importance to the point. He wrote, “The name ‘Yorùbá’ was not an identity, for those who came later to be called Yorùbá, since the time of creation, or anytime before the mid-nineteenth century, as is so often misconceived nowadays”. Even though this point bears no real significance, I think the Yoruba people need to be given information that will mold their answers and attitudes to things like this.

It is known that from the middle of the 19th century, the rising literate class of the people now known as the Yorùbá began to popularize the name Yorùbá for their nation. But before then, did their nation have a common group name?

In the literature of the Atlantic trade (16th to early 19th century), we see some inclusive names for those members of this nationality that were involved in the trade, but “Yorùbá” was not one of such names. In some parts of the New World, some of them were identified with subgroup names such as Eo (Ọ̀yo) ̣́ or Euba (Ẹ̀gbá), etc. Others were identified in other places with group names coined from their cultural peculiarities – names such as Aku (coined from the phrase Ẹ kú which occurs in most Yorùbá greetings), or Lucumi (apparently from the affectionate Yorùbá phrase Olùkù mi, my dear friend). Still another identifying group name in some parts of the New World was Nago (probably derived initially from the name of the far western Yorùbá subgroup, Ànàgó, from among whom some of the earliest Yorùbá entrants into the Atlantic slave trade probably originated).

Yet, we also find that the name Yorùbá existed all that time. In the present state of our knowledge, the basic outline of what we know about the name Yorùbá would be as follows: First, there is some evidence strongly indicating that the name Yorùbá was in use in parts of the West African interior in reference to a people before the 16th century. That is, though the name did not occur in the records of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the New World or in Europe or on the West African coast, it did exist in the West African interior – in the Upper Niger territories in the Western Sudan where the Yorùbá had been going in large numbers since about the 5th century AD as long-distance traders. A written use of the name in reference to the group appears in a book published in Timbuktu in the Songhai Empire in 1615, written by an indigenous Songhai Arabic scholar, Ahmed Baba – author of many books, probably the most prolific Black West African scholar before the 19th century. The name Yorùbá was very probably in use there for the group before Ahmed Baba’s time.

READ MORE: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/11/01/about-the-name-yoruba-by-prof-banji-akintoye/