Creole peoples Creole peoples Creole people are ethnic groups which originated during the colonial-era from racial mixing between Europeans and non-European peoples, known as creolisation. These groups are typically descended from White Western European colonial settlers, West African slaves, Haitians and indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Creole peoples vary widely in ethnic background and mixture, and many have since developed distinct ethnic identities. The development of creole languages is attributed to, but independent of, the emergence of creole ethnic identities. The English word "creole" derives from the French "créole", which in turn came from Portuguese "crioulo", a diminutive of
Etymology The word "etymology" derives from the Greek word (), itself from (), meaning "true sense", and the suffix "-logia", denoting "the study of". In linguistics, the term "etymon" refers to a word or morpheme (e.g., stem or root) from which a later word derives. For example, the Latin word "candidus", which means "white", is the etymon of English "candid". Etymologists apply a number of methods to study the origins of words, some of which are: Etymological theory recognizes that words originate through a limited number of basic mechanisms, the most important of which are language change, borrowing (i.e., the adoption