Haitian Vodou - Names and Etymology

Names and Etymology

Vodou is a Haitian Creole word that formerly referred to only a small subset of Haitian rituals. It is descended from an Ayizo word referring to "mysterious forces or powers that govern the world and the lives of those who reside within it, but also a range of artistic forms that function in conjunction with these vodun energies." In Haiti, practitioners occasionally use “vodou” to refer to Haitian religion generically, but it is more common for practitioners to refer to themselves as those who “serve the spirits” (sèvitè) by participating in ritual ceremonies, usually called a "service to the loa" (sèvis loa) or an "African service" (sèvis gineh). These terms can also be used to refer to the religion as a whole.

Outside of Haiti, the term vodou refers to the entirety of traditional Haitian religious practice. Originally written as vodun, it is first recorded in Doctrina Christiana, a 1658 document written by the King of Allada's ambassador to the court of Philip IV of Spain. In the following centuries, vodou was eventually taken up by non-Haitians as a generic descriptive term for traditional Haitian religion. There are many used orthographies for this word. Today, the spelling vodou is the most commonly accepted orthography in English. Other potential spellings include vodou, vodoun, vaudoux, and voodoo, with vau- or vou- prefix variants reflecting French orthography, and a final -n reflecting the nasal vowel in West African or older, non-urbanized, Haitian Creole pronunciations.

The spelling voodoo, once very common, is now generally avoided by Haitian practitioners and scholars when referring to the Haitian religion. This is both to avoid confusion with Louisiana voodoo, a related but distinct set of religious practices, as well as to separate Haitian vodou from the negative connotations and misconceptions the term “voodoo” has acquired in popular culture. Over the years, practitioners and their supporters have called on various institutions including the Associated Press to redress this misrepresentation by adopting Vodou in reference to the Haitian religion. In October 2012, in a historic move, the Library of Congress decided to change their subject heading from "Voodooism" to Vodou in response to a petition by a group of scholars and practitioners in collaboration with KOSANBA, the scholarly association for the study of Haitian Vodou based at University of California Santa Barbara.