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
Folk etymology original French "chaise longue" ("long chair"), has come to be associated with the word "lounge". Rebracketing is a process of language change in which parts of a word that appear to be meaningful (such as *"ham" in "hamburger") are mistaken as elements of the word's etymology (in this case, the word "ham"). Rebracketing functions by reanalyzing the constituent parts of a word. For example, the Old French word "orenge" ("orange tree") comes from Arabic "an nāranj" ("the orange tree"), with the initial "n" of "nāranj" understood as part of the article. In back-formation a new word is created, often by