Mulato
| Total population | |
|---|---|
|
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| Regions with significant populations | |
| Latin America, Caribbean, United States, South Africa, Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Mascarene Islands, United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Namibia | |
| Languages | |
| Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, Dutch, Afrikaans, Creole languages, others. | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| African peoples, Europeans (mostly British, Irish, French, Iberians, and Dutch), and Native Americans |
Mulatto is a term used to refer to persons born of one white parent and one black parent or to persons born of a mulatto parent or parents. The term today is generally confined to historical contexts and English-speakers of mixed white and black ancestry seldom choose to identify themselves as "mulatto."
The term is generally considered archaic, and may be taken as pejorative, especially in the United States, where the terms "multi-ethnic", "multiracial" or "biracial" are preferred. The term is frequently found in historical documents (e.g., the U.S. Census, birth and death records, etc.) where it is merely descriptive.
Some residents of Spain, Latin America, the Caribbean, and some countries in Africa freely use the term mulatto, or its cognates in other languages, usually without any suggestion of insult. In Latin America, most mulattoes have descended from multi-ethnic relationships dating to the slavery period, rather than from recent ethnic mixing. This is especially true in Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti, Cape Verde, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.
The etymology of the term is usually believed to derive from the Spanish and Portuguese mulato, which comes from mula (old Galician-Portuguese, from the Latin mūlus), meaning mule, the hybrid offspring of a horse and a donkey.
Some dictionaries and scholarly works trace the word's origins to the Arabic term muwallad, which means "a person of mixed ancestry".Muwallad literally means "born, begotten, produced, generated; brought up", with the implication of being born and raised among Arabs, but not of Arab blood. Muwallad is derived from the root word WaLaD (Arabic: ولد direct Arabic transliteration: waw, lam, dal), and colloquial Arabic pronunciation can vary greatly. Walad means, "descendant, offspring, scion; child; son; boy; young animal, young one".
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