Haitian

How to spell haitian

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce haitian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does haitian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Haiti, its people, or its culture.
2. nounA person from Haiti or of Haitian descent.

Haitian in a sentence

• adjective

  The restaurant serves traditional haitian cuisine on weekends.

• noun

  The visiting haitian spoke fluent French and Creole.

• adjective

  She studied haitian history at university for two years.

• noun

  Every haitian in the choir had trained in Port-au-Prince.

Where does haitian come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is formed from the country name Haiti combined with the English suffix -an, which marks a person or thing as belonging to a place. The name Haiti itself comes from the Taino word 'Ayiti', the language of the Indigenous people who lived on the island before European contact; it meant something like 'land of high mountains' or 'mountainous land', a fitting description of the rugged terrain. After the island was colonised, the territory was long known by French and Spanish names, but when the formerly enslaved population won independence in 1804 they revived the older Indigenous name. The adjective and noun 'Haitian' entered English alongside the country's emergence as the first independent Black republic. The spelling trap lies in the 'ti', which is pronounced like 'sh', and in remembering that the ending is -ian rather than -ion.

How the word is built

• Haiti (the Caribbean nation)
• -an (suffix meaning 'belonging to' or 'native of')