Big Cypress Bayou in Jefferson, Texas off U.S. Route 59.

A bayou at the Sabine River at the Louisiana rest stop.

The word was first used by the English in Louisiana and is thought to originate from the Choctaw word bayuk, which means "small stream." Another theory on the origin of bayou is from the French words "bas lieu" (pronounced phonetically as ba-li-you) meaning "low land". The first settlements of Acadians in southern Louisiana were near Bayou Lafourche and Bayou des Ecores, which led to a close association of the bayou with Cajun culture.

Bayou Country is most closely associated with Cajun and Creole cultural groups native to the Gulf Coast region generally stretching from Houston, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama, with its center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

An alternate spelling "buyou" has also been used, as in the "Pine Buyou" used in a description by Congress in 1833 of Arkansas Territory.

In Fiction

Bayous are often the setting of horror stories as they are commonly seen as spooky and mysterious.

Films

• Southern Comfort (film)
• Eve's Bayou
• The Skeleton Key
• Hatchet
• The Reaping
• Swamp Thing

Literature

• the novels of Anne Rice
• The Southern Vampire Mysteries

Television

• True Blood

Music

• Bayou Country - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Entertainment

• Jambalaya_(On_the_Bayou)

See also

• Wetland
• Slough
• Swamp
• Hurricane on the Bayou

Notable bayous

• Bayou Bartholomew
• Bayou Lafourche
• Cypress Bayou
• Bayou St. John
• Devil's Bayou (fictional)
• Big Bayou Canot
• Buffalo Bayou
• 12-mile bayou
• French bayou

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