English words of African origin

• azawakh - probably from Fula or Tuareg. A breed of dog from West and North Africa
• banana – adopted from Wolof via Spanish or Portuguese
• banjo – probably Bantu mbanza
• basenji – breed of dog from Central Africa - Congo, Central African Republic etc.
• boma – from Swahili
• bwana – from Swahili, meaning a husband, important person or safari leader
• chimpanzee – loaned in the 18th century from a Bantu language, possibly Kivili ci-mpenzi.^[1]
• dengue – possibly from Swahili dinga
• ebony - from Ancient Egyptian hebeni
• gerenuk - from Somali. A long-necked antelope in Eastern Africa (Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Djibouti)
• gnu – from Khoisan !nu through Khoikhoi i-ngu and Dutch gnoe
• goober – possibly from Bantu (Kikongo and Kimbundu nguba)
• gumbo – from Bantu (Kimbundu ngombo meaning "okra")
• impala – from Zulu im-pala
• impi – from Zulu language meaning war, battle or a regiment
• indaba – from Xhosa or Zulu languages – 'stories' or 'news' typically conflated with 'meeting' (often used in South African English)
• jenga - from the Swahili word for 'build'
• jumbo – from Swahili (jambo (hello) or from Kongo nzamba "elephant")
• Kwanzaa – recent coinage (Maulana Karenga 1965) as the name of an African American holiday, abstracted from a Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza, meaning "first fruits [of the harvest]"
• kijiji - from Swahili for 'village,' 'hamlet' or 'small town'
• lapa – from Sotho languages – enclosure or barbecue area (often used in South African English)
• macaque – from Bantu makaku through Portuguese and French
• mamba – from Zulu or Swahili mamba
• marimba – from Bantu (Kimbundu and Swahili marimba, malimba)
• okapi – from a language in the Congo
• safari – from Swahili travel, ultimately from Arabic
• sangoma – from Zulu – traditional healer (often used in South African English)
• Tilapia – Possibly a latinization "tlhapi", the Tswana word for fish^[2]
• tsetse – from a Bantu language (Tswana tsetse, Luhya tsiisi)
• ubuntu – Nguni term for "mankind; humanity", in South Africa since the 1980s also used capitalized, Ubuntu, as the name of a philosophy or ideology of "human kindness" or "humanism"
• zebra – of unknown origin, recorded since c. 1600, possibly from a Congolese language, or alternatively from Amharic.
• zombie – likely from West African (compare Kikongo zumbi "fetish", Kimbundu nzumbi "ghost"), but alternatively derived from Spanish sombra "shade, ghost"

References