Melungeon - Etymology

Etymology

There are many hypotheses about the etymology of the term Melungeon. One plausible explanation favored by linguists and many researchers on the topic, and found in several dictionaries, is that the name derives from the French mélange, or mixture. As there were French Huguenot immigrants in Virginia from 1700, their language could have contributed a term.

The scholars Joanne Pezzullo and Karlton Douglas speculate that a more likely derivation of Melungeon, related to the English culture of the colonies, may have been from the now obsolete English word malengin (also spelled mal engin) meaning "guile", "deceit", or "ill intent". It was used by Edmund Spenser as the name of a trickster figure in his epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590–1596), widely popular in Elizabethan England. The phrase "harbored them Melungins" would be equivalent to "harbored someone of ill will", or could mean "harbored evil people", without reference to any ethnicity.

A different explanation traces the word to malungu (or malungo), a Luso-African word from Angola meaning shipmate, derived from the Kimbundu word ma'luno, meaning "companion" or "friend".

Kennedy (1994) speculates that the word derives from the Turkish melun can (from Arabic mal`un jinn ملعون جنّ), which purportedly means "damned soul". But, the Turkish word can, meaning "soul", is Persian in origin, rather than Arabic. Kennedy apparently confuses it with the Arabic word jinn, better known as genie. He suggests that, at the time, the (condemned soul) was a term used by Turks for Muslims who had been captured and enslaved aboard Spanish galleons.

Some writers try to connect the term Melungeon to an ethnic origin of people designated by that term, but there is no basis for this assumption. It appears the name arose as an exonym, something which neighboring people, of whatever origin, called the multiracial people.

The earliest known written use of the word Melungeon is in an 1813 Scott County, Virginia Stony Creek Primitive Baptist Church record:

"Then came forward Sister Kitchen and complained to the church against Susanna Stallard for saying she harbored them Melungins. Sister Sook said she was hurt with her for believing her child and not believing her, and she won't talk to her to get satisfaction, and both is 'pigedish', one against the other. Sister Sook lays it down and the church forgives her."

On 7 October 1840, the polemical Brownlow's Whig of Jonesborough, Tennessee, published an article entitled "Negro Speaking!" The publisher referred to a rival Democratic politician with a party in Sullivan County as "an impudent Malungeon from Washington City a scoundrel who is half Negro and half Indian," then as a "free negroe". In this and related articles, he does not identify the Democrat by name.

Different researchers have developed their own lists of the surnames of core Melungeon families, as generally, specific lines have to be traced. DeMarce (1992) listed Hale as a Melungeon surname. By the mid-to-late 19th century, the term Melungeon appeared to have been used most frequently to refer to the multi-racial families of Hancock County and neighboring areas. Several other uses of the term in the print media, from mid-19th to early 20th century, have been collected at the Melungeon Heritage Association Website. The spelling of the term varied widely, as was common for words and names at the time; eventually the form "Melungeon" became standard.