feeding for the negritos

The word "Negrito" is the Spanish diminutive of negro, used to mean "little black person". This usage was coined by 16th-century Spanish missionaries operating in the Philippines, and was borrowed by other European travellers and colonialists across Austronesia to label various peoples perceived as sharing relatively small physical stature and dark skin.^[2] Contemporary usage of an alternative Spanish epithet, Negrillos, also tended to bundle these peoples with the pygmy peoples of Central Africa, based on perceived similarities in stature and complexion.^[2] (Historically, the label Negrito has occasionally been used also to refer to African pygmies.)^[3] The appropriateness of using the label "Negrito" to bundle together peoples of different ethnicities based on similarities in stature and complexion has been challenged.^[2]

Many on-line dictionaries give the plural in English as either "negritos" or "negritoes", without preference. The plural in Spanish is "negritos".^[4][5]

A young Onge mother with her baby (Andaman Islands, India, 1905)