May 7, 1997

coolie

The word "coolie" is used offensively to refer to an unskilled laborer in the Far East. The word has the same meaning in Vietnamese, though it is spelled differently. Please tell me the origin of the word.

The word coolie is a borrowing from Hindi, one of the main languages of India, where it means 'a day laborer'. The Hindi word is probably borrowed from Tamil, another language of India. There is also the possibility that the word is influenced by Kuli, the name of a people from Gujarat who were often employed as laborers.

Coolie is first found in English in the early seventeenth century, but similar words are found in Portuguese and French in the sixteenth century, which suggests that the word was common to Europeans in India at that time.

Though coolie is usually used to refer to unskilled Indian or Chinese laborers, the word was first used in India; it was not applied to Chinese laborers until the mid eighteenth century. I'm not familiar with Vietnamese, and can't explain the origin of the word in that language, but I'd assume that the Vietnamese word is either a coincidence, or a later borrowing from a European language. Vietnamese didn't have much influence on European languages in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, and the early association of the word with India shows that coolie cannot be a borrowing from Vietnamese.

The use of coolie to mean 'an Asian laborer' is not normally considered offensive as a word; it's more the practice of imperialism it suggests that can be offensive. At this point it is found almost exclusively in historical use. Coolie is, however, used as a racist term to refer to 'an Asian person' (with no suggestion of laboring), especially in South Africa, and this use is of course quite offensive.