Connie in Santee, California, is curious about a term she read in Isabel Wilkerson’s acclaimed history of the Great Migration out of the Jim Crow South, The Warmth of Other Suns (Bookshop|Amazon). A shotgun house is a narrow house, the width of one room, with no hallway, just one room leading into the next. The old saw that the name comes from the idea that you could fire a gun in the front door and its blast would go through the back door without hitting anything in between may just be a funny story. Researcher John Vlach has done extensive work connecting this type of structure with architectural traditions in Haiti, and suggests that the term “shotgun” in the name of the building derives from togu-nan, which in a Dogon language of Mali means “large shelter” or “house of talk,” where men gather to discuss local affairs. Another helpful resource: A Creole Lexicon: Architecture, Landscape, People Jay Edwards and Nicolas Kariouk Pecquet du Bellay de Verton (Amazon). This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Shotgun House — A Name That May Reflect African Origins”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Connie Charles. I’m from Santee, California.
Just outside San Diego. Well, great. What’s on your mind today, Connie?
Well, I was curious about a word that I have seen used more than once recently, because I’ve been reading about the South, and I have been reading Isabel Wilkerson’s books, Cast and the Warmth of Other Suns. But she talks about shotgun houses as if it needs to be stated.
In other words, this is something typical, apparently. What did you take that to mean when she talks about a shotgun house?
Well, when you think about a shotgun, you think about the shot spraying out in many directions. But then I looked it up in the dictionary and I saw that it had to do with houses that had one room going, I guess, with a doorway into another.
In other words, without a hallway that rooms would go off of. So that’s what I’m picturing.
Yeah, that’s right. It’s a, the house is basically one room wide and usually built perpendicular to the street. And there are two or more rooms all in a row, no hallway, each room leading into the next.
It’s usually one story tall and maybe has a gable or a porch in the front. Yeah, and that’s a shotgun house.
But why shotgun? One theory that I saw in a newspaper article published, oh, heck, a long time ago, 1908, was that these were houses that people with not a lot of money lived in.
They were housing for the poor, people who worked in the fields or people who had a hard time making rent. And so the landlord would come around with a shotgun to collect the rent.
And there’s one story in the Charlotte Observer from 1908 where he says, one landlord frankly said that it is his custom to use a shotgun in the collection of rents and that he admits that he expects to kill some of them.
Oh my goodness. Yeah. So, yeah, that’s one theory.
Another theory that was come up with by John Vlach, V-L-A-C-H, and he did some great work to connect the shotgun house to Haitian and the West African traditions.
He suggests it might be a form of a word from a language family from West Africa, particularly the Dogon, D-O-G-O-N, of Mali, where a word that kind of sounds like it means a large shelter or a house of talk.
Usually reserved for men to go to discuss life, business, or to take a nap, that sort of thing.
Well, that, but we don’t really have an idea, I guess, of what the word shotgun could have been based on verbally or etymologically.
We do, yeah. The word is, it looks like togu-na, T-O-G-U-N-A-N, togu-na.
The problem with that is we don’t really have the written record because obviously when slaves were brought to the New World, they didn’t have writing and they didn’t bring it with them.
They didn’t write it down.
Also, there’s a huge gap between the arrival of slaves, the loss of their language, and then the appearance of the phrase shotgun house in print, a giant gap.
So it’s really hard to explain how that word would have persisted and shown up in English.
John Vlatch certainly was an excellent researcher.
He did extraordinary work to connect us to Haiti.
He talks about in his work how the style of the shotgun house was probably brought to the United States by the French Creole who were escaping the Haitian Revolution.
This is more than 200 years ago.
Many of these houses were built in Louisiana, the Mississippi River Valley, and the Caribbean.
So this is where you typically will find these houses in places of black settlement in the United States.
So shotgun houses are strongly associated with African-American culture in the United States.
And they’re a large part of the identity, especially in Louisiana, of black Louisianans and black language in Louisiana.
That really explains why Wilkerson would use the word more than once.
That’s interesting.
I want to recommend a book to you, which will tell you more than I could possibly tell you right now.
It’s by J. Dearborn Edwards, and this is a long name, but Nicolas Kerouk Paquette du Belay de Verton.
I don’t know if he pronounces it in the French way, but it’s called a Creolexicon, Architecture, Landscape, People.
How wonderful. Okay, I will check that out.
Meanwhile, Connie, you’ve got me wanting to go back and reread The Warmth of Other Suns because it’s like a novel, right?
It’s just this sweeping, majestic history of the Great Migration out of the Jim Crow South.
Yes, yeah.
And knowing her process in interviewing more than 1,000 people and then concluding, you know, determining the three lives that she, or families that she determined because of their destination.
So, yes, it’s great.
Well, thank you for sharing what you’re reading and for bringing us a really interesting question about shotgun houses.
Yeah, we appreciate it. Take care now.
Thank you very much. All the best to you.
Bye-bye.
Thanks, Connie. Bye-bye.
We’ll link to that book, A Crail Lexicon, on our website.
And if you’ve got questions or comments or ideas on the way we live and the language about it, call us, 877-929-9673, or email us, words, at waywordradio.org.
