Pidgin or “pigeon” English? The name explained

Type “pigeon English” into a search engine and you are in good company: it is one of the most common ways people spell it. The correct modern spelling is pidgin, and the word has nothing to do with the bird. But the “pigeon” spelling is not as silly as it looks. For a while in the nineteenth century, it was a normal way to write it.

The short answer

• Pidgin is the right spelling today, for the language type and for specific languages such as Nigerian Pidgin.
• Pigeon English is an old, now archaic spelling of “pidgin English”. Dictionaries list it, but mark it as out of date.
• The word is not about pigeons. The popular story that it comes from message-carrying pigeons is a false etymology.

Where “pidgin” comes from

The most widely accepted explanation is that pidgin is a Chinese pronunciation of the English word business. It grew up in the trading ports of southern China, first Macao and Canton (Guangzhou), where from the seventeenth century Chinese and European merchants did business in a simplified contact English now called Chinese Pidgin English.

The earliest uses recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary, from 1807, mean simply “business” or “affair”, as in “that is my pidgin”, meaning “that is my business”. The phrase “pidgin English” is recorded from 1855: the English of business. By the 1860s “pidgin” on its own could mean that language, and by the end of the century linguists were using it for any simplified contact language anywhere in the world.

That last step matters. The word started as the name of one language in China and became the name of a whole type of language, which is why the languages of West Africa called Pidgin carry a name from Canton without having anything to do with it.

So why “pigeon”?

Two reasons. First, the words sound almost the same in English, and “pigeon” is the word most people already know how to spell. Second, it really was written that way. Wiktionary lists pigeon English as an archaic form of pidgin English, citing John Camden Hotten’s Slang Dictionary of 1873, and notes that the old sense of the word, “a person’s business”, was also spelt “pigeon”.

The bird story came later, as these stories do: pigeons carry messages, pidgin carries messages between people with no common language, so the explanation feels right. It is a neat coincidence, not the history.

Other theories

Because the early record is thin, scholars have floated other origins. Ones mentioned in the literature include:

• the Hebrew pidyon, meaning exchange or trade;
• a Chinese pronunciation of the Portuguese ocupação, “occupation” or “business”;
• a South Seas pronunciation of the English word “beach”;
• the Portuguese baixo, “low”.

None has displaced “business”, which most dictionaries give as the origin. Some writers still present it as a belief rather than a settled fact, which is the honest position.

What is a pidgin, exactly?

Linguists use two words that are easy to mix up:

The line between them is not always sharp, and Nigerian Pidgin is the famous case in point.

Is Nigerian Pidgin really a pidgin?

By the textbook definition it has outgrown the name. Ethnologue’s figures, quoted by Wikipedia, put it at about 4.65 million first-language speakers and about 116 million second-language speakers (2020); other estimates, used by the BBC when it launched its Pidgin service in 2017, say “over 75 million”. Whatever the true number, millions of Nigerians grow up speaking it at home, and it has a full grammar of its own. Linguistic reference works describe it as a pidgin/creole, and in academic writing it is often called Naijá.

Most Nigerians simply call it Pidgin, sometimes Broken or Broken English. That last name is common but misleading: Pidgin is not English done badly. It has rules English does not have, such as dey for ongoing action and don for finished action, and its words come from English, Portuguese, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa and more. Speakers treat it as a separate language from standard Nigerian English, which is what schools and government use; Pidgin itself has no official status.

Is “pigeon English” offensive?

Usually it is just a spelling mistake, and nobody minds. Where care is needed is the attitude that sometimes comes with it. Calling a language “pigeon” or “broken” can imply it is a lesser form of English, and many speakers and linguists push back on that. If you are writing about Nigerian, Ghanaian or Cameroonian Pidgin, use “Pidgin” with a capital P, the way you would write the name of any language.

Where you will hear it in AJ Cities

AJ Cities is a free open-world game set on the edge of Ajegunle, Lagos. Its characters speak English with a light touch of Pidgin: an abeg here, an abi there, Chuks greeting AJ with “AJ! Na you?” (Is it you?). It is written so that a reader in Houston or London can follow every line, and a reader in Lagos will recognise the street. If you want to go further, start with 50 Nigerian Pidgin phrases with meanings or how Nigerian, Ghanaian and Cameroonian Pidgin compare.

Is it pidgin or pigeon English?

Pidgin. “Pigeon English” is an old spelling that dictionaries now mark as archaic, and the word has nothing to do with the bird.

Where does the word pidgin come from?

Most dictionaries trace it to a Chinese pronunciation of the English word “business”, from the trading ports of southern China. It is recorded from 1807, and “pidgin English” from 1855.

What is the difference between a pidgin and a creole?

A pidgin is a contact language with no native speakers. A creole is what a pidgin becomes when a community grows up speaking it as a first language, with a full grammar of its own.

Is Nigerian Pidgin a creole?

It is often described as a pidgin/creole: millions of Nigerians speak it as a first language and it has its own grammar, but most people still call it Pidgin.