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The Tigray-Tigrinya are an ethnic group in Ethiopia and Eritrea whose language is called Tigrinya. They make up approximately 95% of the 95.5% Ethiopian Orthodox Tigray Region of EthiopiaFDRE States: Basic Information - Tigray, Population (accessed 22 March 2006), and are 6.2% of the population of Ethiopia as a whole, numbering about 4.5 million.Ethiopia: A Model Nation of Minorities (accessed 22 March 2006) Tigrinya speakers are approximately 50% of the population in neighboring Eritrea at about 2.25 million people.

Name

There is no generally agreed on name for the people who speak Tigrinya. The name of the language (Tigrinya), which its speakers as well as others use to refer to it, is derived from the region in Ethiopia where most of its speakers live, Tigray; the suffix means 'language of'. A native of Tigray is referred to in Tigrinya as ' (male), ' (female), (plural). In Eritrea, Muslim speakers of Tigrinya are known unofficially as Jebertis. Christian speakers of the language in Eritrea are simply referred to as Bihér-Tigrinya (or Tigrinya). In Eritrea, officially, any ethnic Tigrinya is known as Bihér-Tigrinya regardless of their religion.

History

The Tigray-Tigrinya (also referred to as Tigrean) people are descendants of Semitic peoples, whose presence in Ethiopia is postulated to have existed from at least 2000 BC, based on linguistic evidence.Stuart Munro-Hay. Aksum: A Civilization of Late Antiquity. Edinburgh: University Press. 1991, pp.57 According to their traditions they (along with other Ethiopian Semitic speaking groups) trace their roots to Menelik I, the child born of the queen of Sheba and King Solomon.

The Tigray-Tigrinya have been associated with the Amhara in the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, also called Abyssinia (from Habesha, an ancient group of Ethiopian clans). The first possible mention of the Tigray-Tigrinya people (who were previously undifferentiated as a specific group from Semitic speakers in the Kingdom of Aksum) is in the 8th to 10th c. manuscripts preserving the inscriptions of Cosmas Indicopleustes, whose notes on his writings include a mention of a tribe called Tigretes, conceivably the first mention of Tigray and the Tigray-Tigrinya people.Munro-Hay. Aksum, pp.187

In Ethiopia, Tigrinya is the third most spoken language and the "Tigray" are the third largest ethnic group, after the Oromo and Amhara. In Eritrea, Tigrinya is by far the most spoken language.

Notes

See also

Ethnic groups in Ethiopia | Ethnic groups in Eritrea

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Tigray-Tigrinya people".

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