The term Creole and its cognates in other languages such

as crioulo, criollo, creolo, crole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kreol, kriol, krio, etc. have been applied to people in different countries
and epochs, with rather different meanings. Typically they are partially or fully descended from Caucasian European colonial
settlers. Their language, culture and/or racial origin represents the creolization resulting from the interaction and adaptation of
colonial-era emigrants from Europe with non-European peoples, climates, and cuisines.
The development of creole languages is attributed to, but independent of, the emergence of creole ethnic identities.
Contents
[hide]

1Etymology and overview

2United States
o 2.1Alaska
o 2.2Chesapeake Colonies
o 2.3Louisiana
o 2.4Texas
3Africa

o
o

3.1Ottoman Africa
3.2Portuguese Africa

4Brazil
5Former Spanish colonies
o 5.1Spanish America
o 5.2Spanish Philippines
6Caribbean
7Indian Ocean
8See also
9References
10External links

Etymology and overview[edit]

The English word creole derives from the French crole, which in turn came from Portuguese crioulo.
The Spanish cognate criollo also derives from Portuguese crioulo. This word, a derivative of the verb criar ("to raise"), was coined in
the 15th century, in the trading and military outposts established by Portugal in West Africa. According to Leite de Vasconcelos, it
derives from criadouro (a Portuguese word still in existence meaning a place where something is raised, also spoken as criadoiro)
and it soon changed through African influence to criaoiro - criooiro - crioilo - crioulo. It later came even to refer to slaves born in the
Americas, according to Baltazar Lopes (1984). Originally, though, it meant descendants of Portuguese settlers who were born and
raised overseas. Miscegenation, however, happened relatively quickly, as can be seen in the settlement of Cape Verde islands.
While the early settlers were white Portuguese, the viability of the settlement could only be kept up by the agency of a mixed
population, given the scarcity of Portuguese women in these new towns and the need of workers for the maintenance of the
settlement. Portuguese Crown policy also encouraged mixed marriages in the colonies to create loyal colonial populations; this was
done by bringing in house slaves, which the settlers got through trade with West Africa, namely in Mauritania's slave market. Later
settlements in the islands were established by already mixed-race Portuguese settlers, who became known as "crioulos".
The following ethnic groups have been historically characterized as "creole" peoples:

Afro-Brazilian Crioulos
Aku Krio people
Atlantic Creoles
Belizean Kriol people
Cape Verdeans (Crioulos)
Criollo people (European diaspora born in Spanish Colonial Americas)
Fernandino Creole peoples
Haitian Creole people

Affranchis

Afro-Honduran Creoles

Liberian Creole people

Louisiana Creole people

Creoles of color

Mauritian Creole people

Nigerian Creole people
Seychellois Creole people
Sierra Leone Creole people
Surinamese Creoles

United States[edit]
Alaska[edit]
People of mixed Alaska Native American and Russian ancestry are Creole, sometimes colloquially spelled "Kriol". The intermingling
of promyshlenniki men with Aleut and Alutiiq women in the late 18th century gave rise to a people who assumed a prominent
position in the economy of Russian Alaska and the north Pacific rim. [1]

Chesapeake Colonies[edit]
Main article: Chesapeake Colonies
During the early settlement of the colonies, children born of immigrants in the colonies were often referred to as "Creole". This is
found more often in the Chesapeake Colonies.[2]

Louisiana[edit]
Main articles: Louisiana Creole people and Creoles of color
In the United States, the word "Creole" refers to people of any race or mixture thereof who are descended from settlers in colonial
French La Louisiane and colonial Louisiana (New Spain) before it became part of the United States in 1803 with the Louisiana
Purchase. Some writers from other parts of the country have mistakenly assumed the term to refer only to people of mixed racial
descent, but this is not the traditional Louisiana usage. In Louisiana, originally Creole was only used to describe people of French
and then Spanish descent who were born in Louisiana, whom used the term to distinguish themselves from newly arrived
immigrants. Later, the terms were differentiated further after the emergence of a newly mixed-race mulatto group that began to
share the usage of the identity, as well as newly arriving Anglo-Americans lumping whites, mulattos and blacks into a general
francophone "Creole" cultural group. The later distinctions were French Creole (European ancestry), Creole of Color (someone of
mixed racial ancestry), and sometimes slaves were referred to as Black Creole (meaning someone of primarily African descendant).
There were also Spanish Creoles, but most in the city of New Orleans were assimilated into the French Creole group as time went
on. However, Spanish Creoles survive today in Louisiana just outside of the city of New Orleans as the Isleos and Malagueos,
both found in southern Louisiana. These distinctions were of the various groups in the Creole culture of Louisiana, especially that of
New Orleans. The majority of the time in early New Orleans, whites of French and/or Spanish descent were defined as the Creoles
and mulattos were described as free people of color and slaves were described as Creole slaves, meaning a possession of the
Creoles (full European descent). It was then later that the mixed race group of mulattos began to refer to themselves as Creole as
well, as they were fathered by French Creole men.
Contemporary usage has broadened the meaning of Louisiana Creoles to describe a broad cultural group of people of all races who
share a French or Spanish background. Louisianans who identify themselves as "Creole" are most commonly from
historically Francophone and Hispanic communities. Some of their ancestors came to Louisiana directly from France, Spain and
others came via the French and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and Canada. Many Louisiana Creole families arrived in
Louisiana from Saint-Domingue as refugees from the Haitian Revolution. They had settled first in Cuba before moving on to New
Orleans, the center of Creole culture in Louisiana.
Spoken Creole is dying with the dissolution of Creole families and continued 'Americanization' in the area. Most remaining
Creole lexemes have drifted into popular culture. Traditional French Creole is spoken among those families determined to keep the
language alive or in regions below New Orleans around St. James and St. John Parishes where German immigrants originally
settled (also known as 'the German Coast', or La Cte des Allemands) and cultivated the land, keeping the ill-equipped French
Colonists from starvation during the Colonial Period and adopting commonly spoken French and Creole French (arriving with the
exiles) as a language of trade.
Creoles are largely Roman Catholic and influenced by traditional French and Spanish culture left from the first Colonial Period,
officially beginning in 1722 with the arrival of the Ursuline Nuns, who were preceded by another order, the sisters of the Sacred
Heart, with whom they lived until their first convent could be built with monies from the French Crown. (Both orders still educate girls
in 2010). The "fiery Latin temperament" described by early scholars on New Orleans culture made sweeping generalizations to
accommodate Creoles of Spanish heritage as well as the original French. The mixed race creoles, descendants of mixing of
European colonists, slaves and Native Americans or sometimes 'Gens de Couleur' (free men and women of colour), began during
the colonial periods with the arrival of slave populations. All Creoles, regardless of race, are a group of collective cultures known as
"Creole", though many non-Louisianans do not distinguish between the two groups Creole groups, those of full European descent
and those of mixed race. They do not recognize the distinctions made in the New Orleans area between the original white colonists

whose offspring were the original first born Creoles in Louisiana and those that were a mixture of people of European ancestry and
slave populations (or free men and women of color).
They were also referred to as 'criollos', a word from the Spanish language meaning "created" and used in the post-French
governance period to distinguish the two groups of New Orleans area and down river Creoles. Both mixed race and European
Creole groups share many traditions and language, but their socio-economic roots differed in the original period of Louisiana history.
Actually the French word Creole is derived from the Portuguese word Crioulo, which described Spaniards born in the Americas as
opposed to Spain.
The term is also often used to mean simply "pertaining to the New Orleans area".
Louisianans descended from the French Acadians of Canada are not creoles in the strictest sense but are referred to as, and
identify as, 'Cajuns' - a derivation of the word Acadian, indicating French Canadian settlers as ancestors. Cajun French dialect and
culture is distinct from Creole French dialects and Creole cultures of New Orleans. However, the Creole culture of Southwest
Louisiana is more like Cajun culture than Creole culture of New Orleans. Though the land areas overlap around New Orleans and
down river, Cajun culture and language extend westward all along the southern coast of Louisiana, concentrating in areas
southwest of New Orleans around Lafayette, and as far as Crowley, Abbeville and into the rice belt of Louisiana nearer Lake
Charles and the Texas border.
The parishes of Pointe Coupee, Evangeline and Avoyelles are largely still Creole. Today, the Parish of Avoyelles probably has one
of the largest percentages of French Creole descendants in its population, according to www.avoyelles.com

Texas[edit]
East Texas and the Gulf Coastal Plains regions near the Louisiana border have a Cajun/Creole influence. Southwestern Louisiana
Creole language is mostly spoken in Southeastern Texas (Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange).[3]

Africa[edit]
Ottoman Africa[edit]
The Ottoman colonization of most of North Africa starting from the 1500s and intermarriage between the colonizing Turkish men
and North African women led to the creation of a distinct ethnicity in Ottoman Algeria, Ottoman Tunisia, Ottoman Libya,
and Ottoman Egypt.[4] Although never originally referred to specifically as creole due to the difference in language, this group was
known as the Kouloughlis (from Turkish kul "slave" or "subject" + olu "son of"). In modern Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt,
people of mixed Turkish and native descent make up a large percentage of the population.[5] Because of assimilation, however, very
little of the modern population speaks Turkish or identifies as of Turkish descent: [6]

Kouloughlis (~34% of population in Algeria)

Turco-Algerians (525% of population)

Turco-Tunisians (2025% of population)
Turco-Libyans
Turco-Egyptians

Portuguese Africa[edit]
The crioulos of mixed Portuguese and African descent eventually gave rise to several major ethnic groups in Africa, especially
in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, So Tom e Prncipe, Equatorial Guinea (especially Annobon
Province), Ziguinchor (Casamance), Angola, Mozambique. Only a few of these groups have retained the name crioulo or variations
of it:

Cape Verde
the dominant ethnic group, called Kriolus or Kriols in the local language; the language itself is also called "Creole";

Guinea-Bissau
Crioulos
So Tom and Prncipe
Crioulos
The island of Mauritius also speaks Creole.

Brazil[edit]

In Brazil, the word crioulo initially denoted persons of Portuguese parentage who were born in Brazil (as distinct
from colonists who were born in Portugal), as was the case in Portuguese-speaking Africa. During the slavery
years, it eventually came to denote a person of primarily African ancestry born in Brazil. In colonial Brazil, it was
common to refer to a Brazilian-born slave as a crioulo, whereas slaves from Africa were known as
"Africans". Crioulo was used to refer to slaves born and raised in Brazil. Later, crioulos was used to refer to all
people of African ancestry in Brazil, where many people were of mixed ethnicity.

Former Spanish colonies[edit]

In regions that were formerly colonies of Spain, the Spanish word criollo (implying "native" or "local") historically
denoted a class in the colonial caste system, comprising people born in the colonies but of totally or at least
largely Spanish descent. The word came to refer to things distinctive of the region, as it is used today, in
expressions such as "comida criolla" ("country" food from the area).
In the period of initial settlement of Latin America, the Spanish crown often passed over Criollos for the top military,
administrative, and religious offices in the colonies in favor of the Spanish-born Peninsulares (literally "born in
the Iberian Peninsula").
The word criollo is the origin and cognate of the French word creole.

Spanish America[edit]
The racially based caste system was in force throughout the Spanish colonies in the Americas, since the 16th
century. By the 19th century, this discrimination and the example of the American Revolution and the ideals of the
Enlightenment eventually led the Spanish American Criollo elite to rebel against the Spanish rule. With the support
of the lower classes, they engaged Spain in the Spanish American wars of independence (18101826), which
ended with the break-up of former Spanish Empire in America into a number of independent republics.

Spanish Philippines[edit]
Racial mixture in the Spanish Philippines occurred mostly during the Spanish colonial period from the 16th to 19th
century. The same Spanish racial caste system imposed in Latin America extended also to the Philippines, with a
few major differences.
Persons of pure Spanish descent born in the Spanish Philippines were those to whom the term Filipinos originally
applied, though they were also called Insulares ("islanders", i.e. Spaniard born in the Philippine islands)
or Criollos ("Creoles", i.e. [Philippine-born Spaniard] "Locals"). Persons of pure Spanish descent, along with many
mestizos and castizos, living in the Philippines but born in Spanish America were classified as 'Amricanos'. The
Philippine-born children of 'Amricanos' were classified as 'Filipinos'. During this era, the term "Filipinos" had not yet
extended to include the majority indigenous Austronesian population of the Philippines to whom Filipinos has now
shifted to imply.
The social stratification based on class that continues to this day in the Philippines has its beginnings in the Spanish
colonial era with this caste system. Officially, however, the Spanish colonial caste system based on race was
abolished after the Philippines' independence from Spain in 1898, and the word 'Filipino' expanded to include the
entire population of the Philippines regardless of racial ancestry.

Caribbean[edit]
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In many parts of the Southern Caribbean, the term Creole people is used to refer to the mixed-race descendents of
Europeans and African slaves born in the islands. Over time, there was intermarriage with residents from Asia as
well. They eventually formed a common culture based on their experience of living together in islands colonized by
the French, Spanish and English.
Creole, "Kreyl" or "Kweyol" also refers to the creole languages in the Caribbean, including Antillean Creole, Haitian
Creole, and Jamaican Creole, among others.
People speak Antillean Creole on the following islands: St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, St. Martin,
Saint-Barthlemy, French Guiana, Belize, and Trinidad & Tobago.
A typical creole person from the Caribbean has French and/or Spanish ancestry, mixed with African and Native
American. As workers from Asia entered the islands, Creole people of color intermarried with Tamil, Lebanese,
Indian and Chinese. The latter combinations were especially common in Guadeloupe. The foods and cultures are
the result of a creolization of these influences.

Indian Ocean[edit]
Main articles: Mauritian Creole people and Seychellois Creole people
See also: Mauritian Creole, Runion Creole, and Seychellois Creole
The usage of creole in the islands of the southwest of the Indian Ocean varies according to the island. In Mauritius,
the term Creole refers to colored people which have the ancestry
of African, British, Chinese, French and Indian.[7] The term also indicates the same to the people
of Runion and Seychelles.[7]
In all three societies, creole also refers to the new languages derived from French and incorporating other
languages.