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Determination of the authenticity of lexical items with Sub-Saharan origin in the voodoo rites of candomble and umbanda in Brazil requires establishing a socio-historical basis for the African diaspora and the current configuration of terreiros. The terreiros demonstrate varying linguistic repertoires according to their affiliation with candomble or umbanda. The terreiros may be of three types 1) yoruban (Nago) in Bahia and Recife; 2) Fon in Sao Luis; and 3) Bantu in the oldest layers of umbanda, the caboclo candombles of Bahia, and the Northeastern cantimbo, the latter being the least apparent. Umbanda has lost a greater amount of Sub-Saharan traditions and contains more Bantu elements, although they appear less frequently since they are in the oldest layers of umbanda. The task of determining the African origins of linguistic data is complicated by pragmatic factors such as the existence of phonological correspondence without accompanying semantic correspondence, the difficulty of determining the meaning of a word in a given text and of tracing which Sub-Saharan language influenced which terreiro, and the scarcity of dictionaries and grammars of Sub-Saharan languages brought to Brazil by the slaves. (SR)