From Spanish 'canibal,' from Carib 'karibna' (person) — Columbus turned an ethnic self-designation into a horror word.
A person who eats the flesh of other human beings; an animal that feeds on others of its own species.
From Spanish 'caníbal,' an alteration of 'caríbal,' from Carib 'karibna' (person, strong man), the self-designation of the Carib people of the Lesser Antilles. Columbus recorded the word as 'Caniba' or 'Canima' in his 1492 journal, mistakenly associating the Caribs with the realm of the Grand Khan ('Can'). The Spanish conflated reports of Carib warfare practices with anthropophagy, and the ethnic name became a generic term for human flesh-eating. The older scholarly term 'anthropophagus' (from Greek) was gradually displaced by this Indigenous
'Cannibal' and 'Caribbean' come from the same word — the Carib people's name for themselves, 'karibna' (strong man). Columbus heard two variants: 'Carib' gave us the Caribbean Sea, and 'Canib' gave us cannibal. One word, two spellings, two wildly different legacies — a sea and an accusation.