Names for contact languages

This article discusses past and current names for contact languages, and their origins. Pidgins and creoles are new languages, and naming them may indicate a perceived continuation from preexisting languages or a break away from the antecedent languages, the lexifiers. Names for individual languages of pidgins and creoles are diverse. The languages may bear the name of the lexifier (e.g. French), a label referring to what today is a type of language (e.g. creole), they may be named after the function of the language (e.g. trade), a colonial vision of the language (e.g. “broken”), a frequent expression (e.g. “Fanakalo” ‘say it like this’), a population, a location, etc. Generic names for pidgins and creoles, as used in academic circles, often started off as names for individual languages. Terms spread, both from languages they were initially applied to, to other languages, and they may spread from being used in one language to another language.