Sambo (racial term)

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Sambo is a term for a person with African heritage and, in some countries, also mixed with Native American heritage (see zambo).

A painting captioned "Negro con Mulatta produce Sambo" ("Negro with a mulatta produces a Sambo"), Indian school, 1770.

Formerly, it had the technical meaning of a person having a mixture of black and white ancestry, more black than white — contrast with mulatto, quadroon, octoroon etc. In modern British English, the term "Sambo" is considered offensive.[1]

Etymology and usage[edit]

The word "sambo" came into the English language from the Latin American Spanish word zambo, the Spanish word in Latin America for a person of mixed African and Native American descent.[2] This in turn may have come from one of three African language sources. Webster's Third International Dictionary holds that it may have come from the Kongo word nzambu (monkey). Note that the z of (Latin American) Spanish is pronounced like the English s rather than as the z in the word nzambu. The Royal Spanish Academy gives the origin from a Latin word, possibly the adjective valgus[3] or another modern Spanish term (patizambo,) both of which translate to "bow-legged".

The equivalent term in Portuguese-speaking areas, such as Brazil, is cafuzo.

Examples of "Sambo" as a common name can be found as far back as the 18th century. In Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair (serialised from 1847), the black skinned Indian servant of the Sedley family from Chapter One, is called Sambo. Similarly, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), one of Simon Legree's overseers is named Sambo. Instances of it being used as a stereotypical name for African Americans can be found as early as the Civil War. The name does not seem to have acquired the intentional, open derogatory connotation until the first half of the 20th century.

Sambo's Grave[edit]

Main article: Sambo's Grave

Sambo's Grave is the 1736 burial site of a young dark-skinned cabin boy or slave, on unconsecrated ground in a field near the small village of Sunderland Point, near Heysham and Overton, Lancashire, England. Sunderland Point used to be a port, serving cotton, sugar and slave ships from the West Indies and North America.

Little Black Sambo[edit]

Main article: Little Black Sambo

The name became especially associated with the children's book Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman, published in 1899. It was the story of a boy named Sambo who outwitted a group of hungry tigers. Bannerman also wrote Little Black Mingo, Little Black Quasha, and Little Black Quibba. In this book, Sambo is the name of a southern Indian boy.

The once-popular "Sambo's" restaurant chain used the Helen Bannerman images to promote and decorate their restaurants although it was named after the chain's co-owners, Samuel Battistone and Newell Bohnett.[4] The word and the choice of a black icon by the chain had such negative connotations that despite the actual origin of the chain's name, they were contributing factors in the chain's demise in the early 1980s.[5]


  1. ^ [1][dead link]
  2. ^ Forbes, Jack, Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples, University of Illinois Press, 1993, p.235.
  3. ^ Collins Latin Concise Dictionary. Glasgow, Great Britain: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997, English-Latin section, p. 20. ISBN 978-0-06-053690-9
  4. ^ "Opening the Memorabilia Shop". Retrieved 2013-11-18. 
  5. ^ "Sambo (2)." Online Etymology Dictionary. Accessed 24 July 2012.


External links[edit]