Etimologia e história da palavra “macumba” e seus significados

Abstract

Existing etymological hypotheses for the lexical unit “macumba” are diverse and controversial, including an origin from Kimbundu “ma'kôba”, combining the elements “ma” (that which frightens) and “kumba” (to sound (frightening)); or, also from Kimbundu, a combination of the prefix “maku-” with plural “mba” (meaning "sortilege" or "sorcery"), resulting in “macumba”, plural of “dikumba”, meaning “lock, padlock”, referencing rituals to "close the body"; or maybe from Kikongo, deriving from the prefix “ma-” plus plural “kumba”, meaning "prodigy"; as well as hypotheses of “macumba” as the name of an ancient African percussion musical instrument or the baobab tree. This study reviews these hypotheses based on data from attestations of "macumba" that predate those previously registered in the literature, present in books by reputable authors and well-known newspapers printed in nineteenth-century Imperial Brazil. Based on this synchronic picture of the mid-nineteenth century, this study seeks to trace, as closely as possible, the terminus a quo for this polysemic, controversial word, as well as to present a new hypothesis in which the word “macumba” would be linked to dance and to a hypothetical Macumbé nation.