User:A12n/Nigerois

Nigerois is a coined term of French construction that is not actually a word in the French language, but has had some use in English to refer to people from Niger, West Africa. The appropriate term for the latter (which is also a French word) is Nigerien (pl. Nigeriens).

The evident purpose of the term was to have a word form clearly distinguishable from that associated with the neighboring country of Nigeria, namely Nigerian.

Usage of the term Nigerois seems to be on the decline, though it is still listed under "Niger" in Merriam-Webster (but perhaps currently in no other dictionary )

Morphology
"Nigerois" is formed from the country name, Niger, plus the French suffix -ois, which is "Used to form adjectives related to a particular country, region or city, their associated inhabitant names, and the local language or dialect."

Origin and Usage
It is not yet clear where the term Nigerois originated, although it could have been in either English language news organizations or government sources (noting particular use by US government).

Usage in US Government documents
The earliest U.S. Government use of "Nigerois" noted so far was in a 1961 U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) pamphlet on African names and concepts. Later use of the term in DoD documents appears to have been infrequent (5 documents from the late 1980s and early 1990s via a Google search).

Another early use appears in the transcript of a Congressional hearing in 1974.

Two uses were noted in USAID reports available online, the first being a 1984 report for an agriculture policy project in Niger However apparently only one other USAID report a decade later made use of the term.

Nigerois was apparently in the CIA World Fact Book until some time before 2008,

Usage in Canadian government documents
The Canadian government terminology base TERMIUM Plus indicated "Nigerois," not "Nigerien," as the English term when checked in mid-March 2013, The current entry, dated 26 March 2013, indicates Nigerois as obsolete.

Usage in the English language press
The earliest use noted in the New York Times was an article in 1969. In 2005, columnist Nicholas Kristof mentioned in his blog that his "copy editor told [him] that the New York Times Stylebook says that the term for the people of Niger is Nigerois, and not to use Nigeriens because of the risk of confusion with Nigerians." There are apparently only a few articles using the term, most of them between 2001 and 2011 - but when querying "Nigerois" in March 2013 the search page asks "Did you mean: Nigerien." It appears that the last use of "Nigerois" in he NY Times was in 2011; "Nigerien" is noted in articles after that date.

The Chicago Tribune apparently used it once, in 2005.

BBC reporting evidently used "Nigerois" intermittently - a Google search shows 6 uses between 1999 and 2011.

Quick Google searches of selected other US media sites seems to indicate that many never used Nigerois in reporting.

The Canadian Press Stylebook (1992) evidently lists "Nigerois" as a or the term in English. Access to this style guide is not available online without subscription, so it is not possible to verify whether there is a more current issue or view what term(s) it lists.

Usage in academic and reference literature
The article on Niger in the ''Encyclopedia of Global Health (Sage, 2008) uses "Nigerois."

The entry on Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara in Encyclopædia Britannica used "Nigerois." A search of EB on the term yielded only this single article.

Notes and references
This is not a Wikipedia article, but rather a user page for a personal project to bring together information about the use of the term "Nigerois" - something that is not appropriate as a Wikipedia page, but useful to have somewhere on Wikipedia.