Etymology of Homie

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rachel from Connecticut.

Hello, Rachel. Welcome.

Hi, Rachel.

I have a question about the slang term homeboy, meaning like friend.

Right.

I was talking to a friend of mine, I guess, about it recently, and it sort of seems like it maybe has an obvious derivation, as in like, you know, it’s a boy from your home.

But then we were thinking about it, and it’s really similar to like the Latin word for man, as in, I don’t know Latin, but French, homme, or Spanish, homme.

And we were wondering if that had anything to do with it, and I was wondering if you guys could help.

We can help indeed.

Yeah, so homeboy meaning just a friend, right?

Yeah, basically, I think.

Yeah, and it started out in black English, but I guess it’s kind of spread to all across the country.

Everybody uses it, right?

Everyone knows what it means?

That would be funny, yes.

Yeah, my homie.

Yeah, homie.

You’re homie.

You’re my homie, Martha.

Yeah, and you’re my homie.

And so it doesn’t actually have any relationship to homo, H-O-M-O, the Latin for man, or the French for man, or the Spanish for man.

It actually is just related to the word home in English.

And it comes from originally the late 1800s.

Homeboy met a male friend from back home.

This was a point in American history during which there was a lot of migration from the south to the north, especially among black Americans.

And there are often cultural and historical ties back to the old home region, even across generations, you know, beyond decades.

And so it was always important to understand that your relationship with somebody had a connection that was deeper than that they just happened to live in your building on your block.

It was somebody that you knew back when.

You knew their people.

They knew your people.

They were from back home.

They were your homeboy.

They sounded like you, too.

They had the same accent.

And it’s related, Rachel, to a word homefolks or a compound homefolks, which is the same exact thing, which is your people from back home.

And when I say your people, there’s definitely a connotation there of family and knowing each other and connected ties and a shared history and just all the things that come from an understanding of the people in your real community, not just somebody that you live next to, but that you live with.

Does that make sense?

So, Rachel, it’s a good guess, but it’s just one of those linguistic coincidences.

I’m curious if you use the expression.

Sometimes, yeah.

I should tell you guys that part of the reason that I decided to call is that I looked this up on Wikipedia.

They think that it has a Latin root, but there’s no source cited.

Hello, Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is, let me just say this for the umpteenth time, and I always get hateful email.

Wikipedia is not reliable.

I usually agree, but that’s why I decided to ask you guys.

Yeah, Wikipedia is one of the – I mean, there are a few entries there where I’ve tried to make changes on Wikipedia or have made changes, and I’ll go back later.

And somebody has just, if you’ll pardon the expression, crapped all over my work.

There’s no point in it.

Oh, that’s Ickypedia.

Ickypedia.

Well, Rachel, very good instincts there.

Very good instincts to check that out.

Well, thank you guys very much.

Okay.

You’re welcome.

Thanks.

Bye-bye.

So, Martha, it’s really surprising to find that homeboy is more than 100 years old, right?

Yeah, I was shocked when I found that out.

Most people would think that it came out with hip-hop in the late 1970s and early 80s, but it’s got a long history.

It definitely comes from black English into mainstream English.

It’s very, very old, yeah, and I just think it’s a beautiful term.

I never recognized the beauty of that term until I realized it went all the way back to a time when people, you know, you recognize somebody from home, and that just does something visceral, right?

It’s true.

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