TNTL 118/4

Annelies Roeleveld

Creool: een woord met geschiedenis

Abstract -- The earliest (Spanish) records prove that the original meaning of criollo was ‘born in the Americas’, denoting descendants of both European settlers and African slaves. In countries without African slaves it came to mean ‘person of European descent’, elsewhere mostly ‘descendant of African slaves, person of mixed race’. The most recent edition of the leading Dutch dictionary still frowns on the ‘mixed race’ denotation, but in Dutch creole has meant ‘descendant of African slaves’ from its very first written appearance in 1740, although the ‘white’ meaning also frequently occurred, even in the East Indies. The history of the word also demonstrates that it is not discriminatory in itself.

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