pidgin (n.)

1876, "artificial jargon of corrupted English with a few Chinese, Portuguese, and Malay words, arranged according to the Chinese idiom, used by the Chinese and foreigners for colloquial convenience in business transactions in the ports of China and the Far East," from pigeon English (1859), the name of the reduced form of English used in China for communication with Europeans, from pigeon, pidgin "business, affair, thing" (1826), itself a pidgin word (with altered spelling based on pigeon), representing a Chinese pronunciation of business. The meaning was extended by 1891 to "any simplified language."