ig.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9k%C3%A8%27
1 correction found
Ha kpowa 'Baike' 'bekee', kpowazie ndi ocha enyiya, ndi bekee.
This etymology is incorrect. Scholarly and primary-source evidence shows forms of Igbo "beke/becca" were already in use for Europeans decades before William Balfour Baikie traveled up the Niger.
Full reasoning
The article says Igbo speakers changed "Baike" into "bekee" and then used it for white people. That chronology does not hold up.
A scholarly note in Africa (Cambridge University Press) explicitly says the Igbo word Beke "has no connexion with the explorer, Dr. Baikie" and points out that Captain Hugh Crow recorded the form "becca" in an English–Eboe vocabulary from about 1790—long before Baikie's Niger expedition in 1854. The Cambridge piece quotes entries such as "mya becca" (foreign wine) and "acco becca" (foreign nut), concluding that "in 1790 becca meant a European."
That means the word was already in use roughly sixty years before Baikie reached the Niger, so it cannot have originated from people mishearing his surname.
2 sources
- NOTES AND NEWS (Africa, Cambridge University Press)
"Before closing these remarks ... the Igbo word Beke ... has no connexion with the explorer, Dr. Baikie, who travelled up the Niger in 1854. A form of this word was used by Captain Hugh Crow who, from about 1790 ... gives: spirits mya becca (foreign wine) ... cocoa-nut acco becca (foreign nut) ... so that in 1790 becca meant a European."
- Memoirs of the Late Captain Hugh Crow of Liverpool: Comprising a Narrative ...
Google Books snippet from Crow's memoir shows the English–Eboe vocabulary including "cocoa nut accobecca," corroborating that a form of "becca" was recorded long before Baikie's 1854 voyage.