page_title: Lokono
section_title: Name
hierarchical_section_title: Lokono / Name
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of George Simon and the Lokono Artists Group in Guyana
context_page_description: The Lokono or Arawak are an Arawak people native to northern coastal areas of South America. Today, approximately 10,000 Lokono live primarily along the coasts and rivers of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, Barbados and French Guiana. They speak the Arawak language, the eponymous language of the Arawakan language family, as well as various Creole languages, and English.
context_section_description: Historically, the group self-identified and still identifies as 'Lokono-Arawak' by the semi fluent speakers in the tribe, or simply as 'Arawak' (by non speakers of the native tongue within the tribe) and strictly as 'Lokono' by tribal members who are still fluent in the language, because in their own language they call themselves 'Lokono' meaning 'many people' (of their particular tribe), with 'Lokobe' meaning 'some people' (of their particular tribe), 'Loko' means 'one person' (of their particular tribe) as well as the name of the language they speak...so one would say 'Da Jiabo Loko' to mean 'I speak the language' (of our tribe), the term 'Arawak' does not exist as a word anywhere in the Lokono language, and instead was given to them by the Warrau tribe of the Orinoco delta who had more frequent contact with the Spaniards of Trinidad since the early 1500s, and the name 'Arawak' was subsequently adopted by all other Europeans in the Caribbean to refer to the Lokono. About 10% or 1,000 of the 10,000 Lokono alive are fluent in their language, all aged 50 and over, with another 10% of varying ages - but mostly 30-50 in age range being semi fluent, and 80% under 30 years of age being unable to speak their native tongue but only able to speak English, Dutch, French or Spanish - as Lokono is not taught in any school system in any country. 
  
  In the 19th century, when Western scholars had established that the major indigenous population of the [Caribbean] during European contact (now known as the [Taíno] were culturally and linguistically related to the South American Lokono-Arawak, ethnologist [Daniel Garrison Brinton] proposed calling the Caribbean people "Island Arawak". Subsequent scholars shortened this convention to simply "Arawak", thereby causing confusion with the mainland people.
  In the 20th century, scholars such as Irving Rouse began using the older term Taíno for the Caribbean peoples to distinguish them from mainlanders. The mainland Arawak call themselves "Lokono" (also spelled "Locono" and "Lokomo"); this has become more common in scholarly literature since the late 20th century./ref>
caption: The Lokono Artists Group
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