The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by the Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute more than 50 million people in Africa, [ 1 ] are over a million outside the continent, and bear further representation among members of the African diaspora.
The vast majority of the Yoruba population is today within the country of Nigeria, where they make up Most Yoruba people speak the Yoruba language , which is the Niger-Congo language with the largest number of native or L1 speakers. To the northeast and adjacent to the Ebira and Northern Edo, groups are the related Igala people on the left bank of the Niger River.
Outside Africa, the Yoruba diaspora consists of two main groupings; the first being that of the Yorubas taken as slaves to the New World between the 16th and 19th centuries , notably to the Caribbean especially in Cuba and Brazil, and the second consisting of a wave of relatively recent migrants, the majority of whom began to migrate to the United Kingdom and the United States following some of the major economic and political changes encountered in Africa in the s till date.
The relevant section of the essay which lists the Yoruba group alongside nine others in the region as translated by John Hunwick and Fatima Harrak for the Institute of African Studies Rabat, reads:. Similarly Kumbe except for a few people of Hombori " [ 40 ]. This early 's reference implies that the name Yoruba was already in popular demotic use as far back as at least the s. Regarding the source and derivation of this name, guesses were posited by various foreign sociologists of external sources.
Burton reports of a Yoruba account in , noting that the name "Yoruba" derives from Ori Obba , i. Some Exonyms the Yoruba are known by across West Africa include; Alata in southern Ghana, [ 46 ] Eyagi in Nupe [ 47 ] [ 48 ] which produced descendant terms such as; Ayagi the pre-modern Hausa word for the Yoruba people [ 49 ] [ 50 ] and Iyaji in Igala.
