Entry · catalog no. 9635
sou-sou
/ /ˈsuːsuː/ /SOO-soo
noun · Caribbean and Black communities in the United States · 1900s
✓ Verified
1.
A group savings arrangement among friends, family or coworkers. Everyone puts in the same amount on a set schedule, and each member takes the full pot in turn. It works as an interest-free loan and a way to save, and it rests on trust rather than banks.
“We started a sou-sou at church: a hundred dollars a week, and it's my turn in March.”
Origin & Attribution
Brought to the Americas by West Africans: the practice is traced to the Yoruba "esusu," and the name is also written susu or sou sou and used across the Caribbean. Caribbean immigrants to cities like New York carried it into Black American communities, where it served people shut out of mainstream banking. Sociologist Ivan Light discussed rotating credit associations among West Indian and Black Americans in Ethnic Enterprise in America (1972).
1900s
Rotating credit associations are practiced across West Africa and the Caribbean.
1972
Sociologist Ivan Light discusses rotating credit among Black immigrants in Ethnic Enterprise in America.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Caribbean and Black communities in the United States · 1900s
Spoken by
Caribbean Americans and Black Americans, especially immigrant communities
$SOUSOUThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising38 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
40/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1972
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
Mainstream crossover
2010
search interest spikes
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
+ Cite a sourceIvan H. Light, Ethnic Enterprise in America (University of California Press, 1972)
book, 1972
See also