The word "Vai". (The Vai Tribe)

THE TERM 'VAI'

The term 'Vai' was first recorded, in the form 'Vei', by Dutch sources
of the first half of the seventeenth century. In these sources, it seems
to denote a political unit near Cape Mount, i.e. within modern Vailand'.

Although the lengthy account of this area drawn up presumably by Dutch
traders and published by Dapper in 1668 was much plagiarized by later
writers, virtually no new information about this area appeared in print
for nearly one hundred and fifty years. Around 1800, reports from the
British settlement at Sierra Leone contained occasional references to the
'Foy' people of Cape Mount; and from the 1820s the Americo-Liberians
of Monrovia came into increasingly close contact with the 'Vei'.

It was perhaps only in the nineteenth century that all sections of the ethno-
linguistic unit came to accept the name Vai, but as the earlier usage is
obscure, for convenience we shall employ the term to describe the whole
unit in earlier centuries.

The 1668 account contained a vocabulary of the Vai language, but under
the name 'Kquoja'; and the first words to appear in print under the name
Vai did not appear till 1840.

Vei = is an adjective and it means "Fertile", from Old Dutch.

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VEI___(1509)

1) Groeizaam 2) Mals 3) Vruchtbare grond 4) Welgedaan 5) Welig 6) Wulps 7) Zeer vruchtbaar