Nelson Goering posted on Facebook as follows (I’ve added links and italics): Roan eats a lot of banana these days, and as is inevitable in such circumstances, we got to talking about the word “banana”. English Wiktionary claims it goes back either to Wolof banaana , or to a similar word in a related language, but goes no further. Le Trésor de la langue française informatisé says it’s probably from “le bantou de Guinée” (the Bantu of Guinea): since Guinea doesn’t, as far as I know, have any native Bantu languages, I guess this either means Equatorial Guinea, or is using “bantou” in a very broad sense to refer to the larger Atlantic-Congo family. I’m curious if anyone I know here has any further light to shed, both whether the Wolof/Atlantic-Congo origin is regarded as likely, and if so, if there’s anything to say about the history of the word *within* Atlantic-Congo. I responded “There are a number of Africanists at LH, so I’ll post this and see what they have to say,” and I am now so posting it. Thoughts?…