Mulatta
| 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 controversial 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. In English, the term is today generally confined to historical contexts. English speakers of mixed white and black ancestry seldom choose to identify themselves as "mulatto."
There is a theory that the word "mulatto" term reportedly originates from the word "mule", as a well-known hybrid animal. This is what makes the term controversial. It is believed that in its origin, the user of the word believed the offspring were mixed species instead of bi-racial.
Some residents of Latin America, Spanish 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.
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".
In al-Andalus, Muwallad referred to the offspring of non-Arab/Muslim people who adopted the Islamic religion and manners. Specifically, the term was historically applied to the descendants of indigenous Christian Iberians who, after several generations of living among a Muslim majority, adopted their culture and religion. Notable examples of this category include the famous Muslim scholar Ibn Hazm. According to Lisan al-Arab, one of the earliest Arab dictionaries (c. 13th century AD), applied the term to the children of Non-Muslim (often Christian) slaves, or Non-Muslim children who were captured in a war and were raised by Muslims to follow their religion and culture. Thus, in this context, the term "Muwalad" has a meaning close to "the adopted". According to the same source, the term does not denote being of mixed-race but rather being of foreign-blood and local culture.
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Wikipedia