Nelson Goering posted on Facebook as follows (I’ve added links and italics):
Roan eats a lot of banana these days, and as is inevitable in such circumstances, we got to talking about the word “banana”. English Wiktionary claims it goes back either to Wolof banaana, or to a similar word in a related language, but goes no further. Le Trésor de la langue française informatisé says it’s probably from “le bantou de Guinée” (the Bantu of Guinea): since Guinea doesn’t, as far as I know, have any native Bantu languages, I guess this either means Equatorial Guinea, or is using “bantou” in a very broad sense to refer to the larger Atlantic-Congo family.
I’m curious if anyone I know here has any further light to shed, both whether the Wolof/Atlantic-Congo origin is regarded as likely, and if so, if there’s anything to say about the history of the word *within* Atlantic-Congo.
I responded “There are a number of Africanists at LH, so I’ll post this and see what they have to say,” and I am now so posting it. Thoughts? (Forget the OED — its entry is from 1885.)
The Ghanaian Oti-Volta languages all borrow the Twi kwadu, not surprisingly, as does Moba, and even the relatively distant Mbelime.
Mooré, on the other hand, has bànándè, probably a back-formation (sound familiar?) from the plural banana; Gulimancema has (probably) borrowed the first element of its báanáantìbu “banana tree” from Mooré (the SIL dictionary does not give a word for “banana” as such.) Nawdm has àyàbà, which is obviously from Hausa in the first instance; I think Hausa got it from Yoruba. (I’m away from my books at present.)
Niggli says “emprunt français” for Mooré bànándè, but he’s often wrong about the source of loans. Dyula has bàràndá; a lot of Wanderwörter got to Mooré via Dyula, but I must say that in this case French does look more likely.
Assuming that the Wolof word exists and is not itself from Portuguese, Wolof looks as likely a source as any for “banana” to me.
To describe “banana” as “from an Atlantic-Congo language” is like saying “weekend” is “from an Indo-European language.” (Or “from Nostratic”, even.) It means nothing (even in the event that it might be technically true.)
References to “the Bantu of Guinea” are helpful inasmuch as they show that the writer has no idea what they’re talking about and are just bloviating.
Didn’t we discuss this before? (Generally a safe bet at LH.)
Another possibility is that French “Guinee” much like English “Guinea” previously described a much larger if vaguely defined region of coastal Africa adjoining the shores of le https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golfe_de_Guin%C3%A9e. There’s some Bantu toward the southern end of that coast. Although Wolof is at the other end …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan_Banana
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Banana was a controversial figure, especially after his criminal conviction. As president, he did not always command respect (a law was passed in 1982, banning Zimbabweans from joking about his surname).
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Apologies if this has come up before.
Didn’t we discuss this before? (Generally a safe bet at LH.)
[2025] Banana is supposed to have come to Portuguese on loan from a West African language …
[2020] The word banana is said to have come to Spanish and Portuguese from Wolof. How did it get there?
[2012] Actually, Trond, there is a more northerly dialect, generally known as Banana-nana Fofana.
Assuming that Wolof banaana is not itself a loan, tracing its origin would be hard. Contrary to the overoptimistic statements of many of those who have attempted comparative work on the “Atlantic” languages, Wolof is not particularly close to other supposedly “Senegambian” languages. One of the few who have applied genuine rigorous comparative methods to languages in this grouping is John Merrill; in his 2018 thesis, “The Historical Origin of Consonant Mutation in the Atlantic Languages” he says
(I’m fairly sure that I’ve quoted this before, too, in service of casting shade on the as-yet-still-mainstream idea that Atlantic-Congo is a demonstrated real thing.)
Didn’t we discuss this before? (Generally a safe bet at LH.)
I had the same feeling, but couldn’t find the discussions; a tip of the Languagehat hat to Stu for doing so!
@JWB:
“Guinea” did indeed originally mean the part of West Africa south of the savanna zone (“West and Central Sudan”), and certainly, if “banana” really is originally from a West African language, it must be from one spoken in this region, as bananas are no more native to the savanna than they are to Europe. (And echt Bantu languages do indeed manage to creep in to the Guinea Zone at its Eastern margin.)
But, unhelpfully for the hypothesis, most of the Guinea-zone languages have words for “banana” which are nothing like “banana” at all (or even much like each other, mostly.) Wolof seems to be about the only exception (which looks a bit suspicious in itself.)
I see that Bété has batɛ, to add to the parade of the unbananalike Twi kwadu, Ewe akɔɖu*, Yoruba ọ̀gẹ̀dẹ̀ etc etc.
I must admit that there is a bit of a danger of circular argument here, as any real bananalike word that actually turns up could be falsely accused of being a mere loan from French or English or Portuguese. But ah hae ma doots; ah hae ma doots.
* A much more likely source of the Nawdm and Mbelime words than Twi, on reflection.
Rather belately, it’s occurred to me that bananas are not actually native to Africa anyway: which surely increases the likelihood that this Wolof banaana is actually a loan. Though that also raises the question of where all the nonbanana West African words came from. Repurposed words for “plantain”, presumably …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_(genus)
But I’ve no idea how long banana-bananas have been in West Africa. Calling ROGER BLENCH (again …) Unfortunately, the paper I previously linked to by him seems to have disappeared along with his website.