“Ogho, popularly spelt as Owo.” Let us start there, because presenting this as though you have uncovered some obscure linguistic secret does not inspire confidence in the argument you are making. Owo and its linguistic relationship with Yoruba have been the subject of scholarly research for years. There is even a published linguistic study titled Question Formation and Focus Construction in Owo: A Yoruba Dialect by Boluwaji Oshodi. So this is hardly a discovery that should astonish anyone familiar with Yoruba linguistic scholarship. You say Owo sounds nothing like Yoruba. My question is simple: what sounds like Yoruba? Do you mean Standard Yoruba, the codified variety used in schools, broadcasting and formal writing? Do you mean the Oyo variety on which Standard Yoruba is substantially based? Or do you mean the full range of regional Yoruba varieties? These categories aren't interchangeable. No. Standard Yoruba is not the sole authentic expression of every Yoruba community. Owo, Ekiti, Ijesa, Ijebu, Ondo and other varieties have their own distinctive features. Some are harder for speakers of other varieties to understand than others. None of that, by itself, proves that they are unrelated languages. You appear to assume that if two speech varieties are not readily mutually intelligible, they must be separate languages. That is far from an adequate linguistic argument, if you must know. Mutual intelligibility is relevant to classification, but it is not an absolute test. Linguists also examine systematic correspondences in vocabulary, phonology, grammar and historical development. The relationship between language and dialect can be complicated, particularly at the boundaries (Owo is one!) Your experience in Ara-Ekiti may be genuine. But an individual experience is not a systematic study of mutual intelligibility across Ekiti, let alone across Yorubaland. Now, on Standard Yoruba being based substantially on Oyo: yes, that is a recognised historical fact. But what exactly do you think it proves? The standardisation of a language is not the same as the creation of the language itself. And neither is the same as the creation of an ethnic identity. Standard Yoruba developed through a historical process of codification, writing and public use. Its Oyo basis does not mean that the other Yoruba varieties were invented afterwards, or that their speakers had no meaningful historical, linguistic or cultural relationships before standardisation. If your argument is that the standardisation process privileged Oyo, say so and demonstrate it. That would be a legitimate subject for scholarly discussion. But you cannot leap from the Oyo basis of Standard Yoruba to the conclusion that the Yoruba identity was fabricated for the benefit of outsiders. Your argument about the origin of the name Yoruba suffers from the same problem. Yes, the history of the name is complicated. Historical scholarship discusses external uses of the name, older regional identities and the consolidation of a broader Yoruba identity during the nineteenth century. But the external origin of a name does not establish the external invention of the people who eventually adopted it. You need to distinguish between the history of a name and the ethnogenesis of a people. Ethnogenesis is the historical process through which collective identities develop. It can involve older identities, political relationships, cultural connections, external influences and the active participation of the people who come to identify with the wider community. It does not require a people to have always used the same collective name, nor does it imply that an identity is fraudulent because it developed over time. The Yoruba identity was not simply a finished, uniform identity handed down unchanged from antiquity. Nor does serious historical scholarship support the simplistic idea that outsiders merely invented a people who previously had no meaningful