Zoreille

Zoreille (or Zoreil ) is the term employed with the island of the Meeting (and more and more in the remainder of the Outre-mer French, it is thus also employed in New Caledonia) to nominate a white French person come from metropolis.

Several assumptions have course on the island to explain the origin of the mot. One would use it:

because the Subways tighten the ear to include/understand the creole , the spoken language locally with the Meeting;
because, when the Subways unload on the island, their ears become red because of tropical heat;
because in the past, when they came from Metropolitan France, it was for espionner the local population in letting trail their ears and to give an account of it to Paris.

Robert Chaudenson in his lexicon of the creole speech of the Meeting (Paris, 1974), class the term in the doubtful origins. According to certain testimonys which it listed, the term did not exist before the First World War. Chaudenson chooses the translation of a Malagasy expression carried out sofina (" ears rouges") who is used to designate Europeans (because they have the red ears). The turn used the use réunionnais at the time of the First World War when, after the mobilization, much of Creoles were sent to Madagascar. Many officers were metropolitan. The creole recruits perhaps could be translated by the Malagasy soldiers the local expression and finding it joke, introduced it into their speech. The more so as in Creole " to make zoreilles cochon" mean " to make the deaf person, to make mine of not entendre".

Another etymology could attach the word to the English foreign which means “foreign”.

This term is also employed in the expression, very rare, “zoreil black” - which nominates a person originating in another overseas department.

Another less pleasant etymology is than the zoreil term would have been allotted to the hunters of slaves who were paid with the number of slaves flee (or maroon) killed and who brought back their ears like proof to be made pay.

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