Somalis or Somali people, are a Cushitic ethnic group and nation native to the Somali Peninsula. The Somali language is the shared mother tongue of ethnic Somalis, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are predominantly Sunni Muslim. Forming one of the largest ethnic groups on the continent, they cover one of the most expansive landmasses by a single ethnic group in Africa. According to some scholars, the ancient Land of Punt and its native inhabitants formed part of the ethnogenesis of the Somali people. This ancient historical kingdom is where a great portion of their cultural traditions and ancestry are said to derive from. Somalis and their country have long been identified with the term Barbar (or Al-Barbar). The 12th century geographer al-Idrisi, for example, identified the Somali Peninsula as Barbara, and classical sources from the Greeks and Romans similarly refer to the region as the second Barbaria. Somalis share many historical and cultural traits with other Cushitic peoples, especially with Lowland East Cushitic people, specifically the Afar and the Saho. Ethnic Somalis are principally concentrated in Somalia (around 17.6 million), Somaliland (5.7 million), Ethiopia (4.6 million), Kenya (2.8 million), and Djibouti (586,000). Somali diasporas are also found in parts of the Middle East, North America, Western Europe, African Great Lakes region, Southern Africa and Oceania.
Etymology
Samaale, the legendary common ancestor of several Somali clans, is generally regarded as the source of the ethnonym Somali. One other theory is that the name is held to be derived from the words soo and maal, which together mean literally "go and milk". This interpretation differs depending on region, with northern Somalis implying it refers to camel's milk, while southern Somalis use the transliteration sa' maal which refers to cow's milk. This is a reference to the ubiquitous pastoralism of the Somali people. Another plausible etymology proposes that the term Somali is derived from the Arabic word for wealthy (zāwamāl), referring to Somali riches in livestock. Historian Mohamed A. Rirash maintains that the etymology of the ethnonym derives from the compound term soofmaal—with soof meaning 'to herd' and maal referring to 'livestock'—initially serving as an occupational label for Somali pastoralists before evolving into the collective name for all ethnic Somalis. Alternatively, the ethnonym is believed to have been derived from the Automoli (Asmach), a group of warriors from ancient Egypt described by Herodotus. Asmach is thought to have been their Egyptian name, with Automoli being a Greek derivative of the Hebrew word S'mali (meaning 'on the left hand side'). A Tang Chinese document from the 9th century CE referred to the northern Somalia coast—which was then part of a broader region in Northeast Africa known as Barbaria, in reference to the area's Barbar (Cushitic) inhabitants—as Po-pa-li. The first clear written reference of the sobriquet Somali dates back to the early 15th century CE during the reign of Ethiopian Emperor Yeshaq I who had one of his court officials compose a hymn celebrating a military victory over the Sultanate of Ifat. Simur was also an ancient Harari alias for the Somali people. Somalis overwhelmingly prefer the demonym Somali over Somalian, which may be viewed as incorrect since the former is an endonym, while the latter is an exonym with double suffixes. The hypernym of the term Somali from a geopolitical sense is Horner and from an ethnic sense, it is Cushite. The constitution of Somalia defines every citizen as a Somali.
History
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