Negro is "black" in Spanish and Portuguese and was first noted in 1555. "Nigger" appeared in 1587 and was not at first a pejorative term but simply a variant pronunciation of Negro. Thereafter, the Portuguese used “Negro” to identify the Slaves as common  personal property and also in its narrow sense of "dark" to include the southern two-thirds of Africa at the time of the 15th century enslavement of Africans. Meanwhile, racist Westerners in Africa  conceded that the Nubians and Puanits were "Negroid" but said Ethiopians were "Hamites"--a dark-skinned Caucasian people!--in their all-out attempt to avoid them being "Negroes." Racists also called Negroes as "primitive"--a vicious designation. Instead of giving Africans credit for great engineering feats (e.g. the Great Walls of Benin and the Great Mosque of Tombut), racists claimed these were built by shipwrecked Greek mariners. In the Americas, starting in the early 18th century, “Negro" became more distinctive than the original colonial term “Servant.” One of the reasons is that by the 1720s the importation of servants had become big business and eager employers were willing to pay the high prices demanded by procurers. Since Africans were more and more being recognized and treated as Slaves rather than servants, while White indentured servants were not, there was an increasing trend to use the term “Negro” in word combinations as a way of distinguishing them -- like “Negro quarters” (which was recorded in 1734). After the Gradual Emancipation Act of 1780 was passed in Pennsylvania, the term "servant" frequently came to mean either someone in indentured servitude or someone employed by the head of the household. Meanwhile, "African Negro" had become an Anglo-American term applied to all persons of African descent and was a wide-spread Southern term of the 1830s for Blacks born in Africa, as opposed to a Black person born in the Americas. Wherever it was used by Whites it designated the lowest division of humankind (with Caucasians first and Mongolians second).       

However, throughout slavery, black, colored, and “negro” (with a belittling small “n”) were all in respectable use for those with dark skin. Contributing to these varied designations for the Slaves was that different European nations were involved in the slave trade. Outgrowths of the word "Negro" have included: Negress (an African female); Negrillo (a "Bushman" on the African continent); Negrito (diminutive African persons such as those in the Philippines); Negritic (of Black people); Negroid (possessing African features and characteristics); Negritude (an aesthetic, cultural, and intellectual movement of African culture); Negrophile (usually a White person who has a filial relationship with Africans or an extreme interest in African history and culture); Negrophobia (fear of African people and African material culture) and Negroness (the circumstance and/or quality of being Negro). After the Civil war, “colored” or Afro-American were preferred labels; then, in 1900, Negro; then, starting in 1920’s but established by the 1960’s, “Black” (a symbol for racial pride); and then, in 1988, African American -- a term failing to account for the diversity of Black America.

Meanwhile, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in 1909 and despite its own choice of name, soon launched a campaign to have "negro" given the dignity of a capital letter and accepted as the standard designation. By 1930, Negro had been adopted by almost every large disseminator of information in the USA. Since then the term "Negro" has had an up and down course--but mostly down, stopping among Black people around 1960. Akbar (Akbar Papers in African Psychology, p.68, 21, 100, 103, 111), by believing “Negro” to be of Greek origin and meaning something dead (“necro” and “nekro”), says to use "Negro" is an attempt to (or one is forced to) deny the philosophical basis of ones Africanity and to therefore be in a state of confusion. Many other Black people have objected to this term for different reasons--e.g. that during slavery “Negro” identified Africans as common personal property. Still others have objected because of the distasteful connotations stemming from Europeans using the term "Negro" as part of the port of origin of where newly arriving Slaves came--e.g. Guinea Negro, Congo Negro, Gambia Negro, and Gullah Negro. To those taking the opposite position, Negro is beneficial because it accounts for all who have African ancestry but who vary widely in skin color and features. Ref. for all "Name" articles: Bailey, Word Stories Surrounding African American Slavery.