Etymology
Kaffir is derived from the Arabic word (Arabic: كافر) that is usually translated into English as "non-believer". The word was originally applied to non-Muslim people in southeast Africa by Arab and Somali traders. It is likely that Portuguese explorers, encountering these traders, interpreted the word as the ethnicity of the native African people they had encountered. Portuguese national poet Camões used the plural form of the term (cafres) in the fifth canto of his 1572 poem Os Lusíadas. This interpretation was probably passed on to other European settlers and explorers.
The word kāfir is the active participle of the Semitic root K-F-R "to cover" or "non- believer". As a pre-Islamic term it described farmers burying seeds in the ground, covering them with soil while planting. Thus, the word kāfir implies the meaning "a person who hides or covers". In Islamic parlance, a kāfir is a person who rejects Islamic faith, i.e. "hides or covers ".
Read more about this topic: Kaffir (racial Term)
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