The ultimate origin for this term is found in Portuguese and Spanish, the term Negro meaning "black," and used in the earliest slave journals from the 1300s.
I suppose you want to know about the English corruption of the term into the demeaning "nigger."
I was always taught it was of southern origin. However, as late as the 1730s, Virginia planters still religiously used the term Negro, borrowed from their Portuguese allies and sometime suppliers of Chattel.
Contrary to American Myth, the earliest use of the word comes from New England, which was doing more business in black slaves in the 1600s than Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland combined, where we find the descending rankings of "non-free" humanity in the following rulings of the Massachusetts legislature:
[The capitalization standards from this period were loose at best.]
1652 "all Scottsmen, Negers, & Indians inhabiting with or servants to the English..."
1656 "scotch, servants, Irish, negers, and persons under one and Twenty years..."
So, Mathew, as far as I can tell, the single most beloved and oft-spoken word of postmodern black rappers and criminals, seems to have been coined by the Puritans, in the time when no decent Bostonian would make do with less then three household slaves, and even the lowest English freeman of a church congregation would own at least a Scott or and Irish, if he could not afford a neger.
From what I've seen, it was very widespread in Britain by the late 1700s. In the 1800s, Karl Marx started using the term in his letters once he moved to London. Queen Victoria also used the term at least one time. I wouldn't rule out England quite yet.
I always thought Mark Twain coined the term :)
Neger is a German and Dutch word. There were Dutch colonies in the north of USA, so this is probably the origin.
change.org/p/remove-the-word-neger-from-the-dutch-dictionary
Yes, the Dutch in New Amsterdam supplied black slaves to the New England Puritans.
Thank you so much for the link.