Yaruba

Yaruba is a term that may refer to multiple uses, but it is most commonly seen as a variant spelling of Yoruba. It is often encountered in historical texts and in contexts where diacritics are dropped.

The Yoruba are a West African ethnic group concentrated in southwestern Nigeria, with communities in Benin and Togo and large diaspora communities around the world. The Yoruba language, part of the Niger-Congo family, is spoken across these areas and has many dialects. Standard orthography uses diacritics, such as Yorùbá; non-diacritic spellings like Yaruba are common in informal writing or older texts.

There is no widely recognized geographical or organizational entity named "Yaruba" in major reference sources. If used as a proper name, it may be a local place name or a personal surname, but such uses are usually obscure and context-dependent.

For clarity, it may be helpful to consider the closely related term Yoruba, which refers to the ethnic group and its language. Distinguishing between Yaruba as a potential misspelling and Yoruba as the established name can reduce confusion in scholarly or linguistic contexts.