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What does the name “Yoruba” come from?
As an ethnic description, the word “Yoruba” was first recorded in reference to the Oyo Empire in a treatise written by the 16th century Songhai scholar Ahmed Baba.
It was popularized by Hausa usage and ethnography written in Arabic and Ajami during the 19th century, in origin referring to the Oyo exclusively.
The extension of the term to all speakers of dialects related to the usage of the Oyo (in modern terminology North-West Yoruba) dates to the second half of the 19th century.
It is due to the influence of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first Anglican bishop in Nigeria. Crowther was himself a Yoruba and compiled the first Yoruba dictionary as well as introducing a standard for Yoruba orthography.
The alternative name Akú, apparently an exonym derived from the first words of Yoruba greetings (such as Ẹ kú àárọ? “good morning”, Ẹ kú alẹ? “good evening”) has survived in certain parts of our diaspora as a self-descriptive, especially in Sierra Leone.
The first name the Yorubas were called was Yariba.
What does that mean? I carried on, Samuel Ajayi Crowther in his Yoruba dictionary defines ‘Yariba’ as a bastard and deceitful person in Hausa.
Another description comes from the Dr Taiwo Ayanbolu who insisted Yoruba is a name derived from Hausa language which means deceit. He claimed he found the definition at York Museum in England dating to the 19th century.
It has been recorded that the Hausa-Fulani who had been in contact with the Yoruba even before the rise of Oyo Empire had for some reasons chosen to call us Yariba, or Yaribansa. Perhaps this might have been a result of Yoruba people’s bargaining skills which often made the Fulani traders fall victim of trade by barter.
Some say that the word Yoruba started protruding during the clash between Yoruba and Fulani that steered the lost of Ilorin to them in the 18th century.
Professor Ade Ajayi in “Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth century” insisted that during the indirect rule era, it was necessary for the imperialists to give a unique name to the entire towns and people who spoke Yoruba language.
Somehow, they settled for Yoruba. Yoruba is a deviation of Yariba which the Yoruba people of that century rejected. The Ijebu, Ijesa and Egba rejected this name vehemently but because during the Kiriji war (the Yoruba civil war) where the collapse of Oyo Empire commenced and the signalling factor the imperialists used to prompt the rule over Oyo from covers.
The name Yoruba was foisted on Oyo and Ibadan mainly on documents and slowly the name Yoruba was enshrined in our culture and hence, our appellation. Research shows that the Egba were the last to accept Yoruba as their appellation, reason coming from facts emanating from the first newspaper published in Yorubaland in 1859, goes: Iwe Iroyin Fun Ara Egba Ati Yoruba. This indicates that the Egba refused the name Yoruba as at 1859.
Furthermore, in the Ifa Corpus there’s no Odu where we were referred to as Yoruba, rather, it is as Omo Kaaro Ojiire, Omo Oduduwa or Omoluabi.
Thus said, the word Yoruba is new in our vocabulary and it is a way of showing we accepted a negative appellation dropped on us by hostile foreigners.
