Yoruba World Family - Iran Yoruba by Olamijulo S.K. PAGE 2. HAEP HOME                FRONT PAGE                              PAGE 3 PAGE 4                          PAGE 5                                       CONTACT US PAGE 2:  Olamijulo S.K. DATE : October 5, 2004 YORUBA is a YORUBA name for YORUBA PEOPLE or LANGUAGE worldwide. OYO is a YORUBA name for the domain of one of well known illustrious Oduduwa children. This has been the case for very many centuries before recorded Arab and European expeditions in Africa. I was told by respectable, authoritative Yoruba History Scholar, Professor Akinjogbin, that the physical location of Oyo town has not always been the same as today but the Yoruba name has endured. YARIBBA is a Hausa name obviously derived from YORUBA. KATUNGA is the reported Hausa name for OYO. Many other groups have other names they call the Yoruba. At some point in the initial recorded contact of Europeans with the Yorubas, they used in their records the Hausa word Yarriba to refer to the first Yoruba people they apparently encountered and another Hausa word Katunga to refer to Oyo. The reason Europeans first did it that way will always remain a subject of speculation. In Traditional Yoruba Language and Culture, there was, there is and there always will be a concept and expression of Yoruba World Family in " Iran Yoruba". Yorubas are known to have existed as a distinct group of people for a very long time before their recorded contact with Arabs and Europeans. Yorubas exist today and will always exist in the future as a DISTINCT LANGUAGE NATIONALITY with language, extensive traditional and religious commonalities. True there has always been, mostly beautiful, cultural variety from Yoruba  area to area, Yoruba town to town and Yoruba community to community in Nigeria, Benin Republic, Togo, Ivory Coast, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Caribbean, USA, United Kingdom and several other countries where a total of over 100 Million people with Yoruba ancestry- "Iran Yoruba"- live in significant numbers all over the world. Such variety is not unique to the Yoruba but is in fact very common among other big Language Nationalities of Africa, Europe, Asia and all over the world. The authors of past English and European records often quoted and sometimes misquoted to this day were Europeans. We can excuse them for any inadequacies in the preliminary stages of their recorded contacts with and perceptions of only those sections of Yoruba People they knew in those initial stages of  their contact. Many of their record inadequacies on the Yoruba larger picture they themselves have corrected in their maps and literature as they acquired better knowledge and experience of the Yoruba. Yorubas and Africans all over the world have a special responsibility to desist from but rather advance beyond inadvertently perpetuating or, as was aptly observed, "parroting"  foreign European record inadequacies when we definitely should know better from our own native experience and study of authentic Yoruba history, culture and oral tradition. Talking of damaging perpetuation and "parroting" of inadequate records about Africans, there are, for example, publications of  otherwise respectable authors that still "copy and paste" Yoruba World Population as 10 million in year 2004. We know that in Lagos State alone, just one of eight majority Yoruba States of Nigeria, Yorubas are more than 10 million and the current world population of "Iran Yoruba" is over 100 million ! Please see more details at http://www.hopeafricaepublisher.com/ywp0704.html The main focus today for Yorubas everywhere must be people cooperation for mutual development. In every one of the many countries where Yorubas currently live, we must seek to cooperate constructively and effectively as people to people with one another AND OTHER LANGUAGE NATIONALITIES at the complementary levels of Extended Family; Village or Town; Language Nationality; Country; Continent and Global for mutual development. We will do well to let our charity begin from our own homes. Please read more about this and related issues for free at http://www.hopeafricaepublisher.com Thank you for your constructive interest. We thank Dr. Femi Fajemisin and Rev. Dr. J.O. Faniran for their thought provoking questions and comments reproduced on Pages 5 and 3 respectively. Olamijulo S.K.