The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa, predominantly in the Americas. The term is most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries, with their largest populations in Brazil, the United States and Haiti. Some scholars identify "four circulatory phases" of this migration out of Africa. The phrase "African diaspora" gradually entered common usage at the turn of the 21st century. The term "diaspora" originates from the Greek ("diaspora", literally "scattering") which gained popularity in English in reference to the Jewish diaspora before being more broadly applied to other populations.