Etymology
Pili pili is the Swahili word for 'pepper pepper'. Other English language spellings may include pili pili in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or peri peri in Malawi, deriving from the various pronunciations of the word in parts of Bantu languages-speaking Africa. Piri piri is the spelling of the name as used in the Portuguese language, namely in the Portuguese-speaking Mozambican community. "There's a lot of debate about how the piri-piri pepper came to Portugal", says Dave DeWitt, author of The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia (Morrow, 1999). "The peppers were originally brought back on Columbus's voyage to the Americas. Most people believe that the Portuguese took the chiles to their colonies of Mozambique and Angola, where they were christened a Swahili word that means 'pepper-pepper', and naturally cross-pollinated. Eventually, one of the varieties made its way to Portugal, where, for some reason, it retained its African name."
The Oxford Dictionary of English records "piri-piri" as a foreign word meaning "a very hot sauce made with red chilli peppers" and giving its origin as the Ronga language of southern Mozambique word for "pepper".
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