Indigenous Common Names and Toponyms in Southern Africa

Abstract

The primary process of toponymic formation by the earliest indigenous inhabitants of the African sub-continent, the Bushmen and Khoikhoi, was evolutionary. Due to their primary onomastic function, descriptions or common names that identified and referred to geographical features gradually lost their descriptive or lexical semantic relevance and assumed the status of proper names. Physical and cultural contact, including language contact, took place between these indigenous groups and incoming Bantu and European peoples over the past 2000 years. Some indigenous toponyms were adopted by the incoming peoples, but adapted to the phonological and later orthographic systems of the receiver languages; some names were translated, while some were replaced by other names. The present article investigates the phonological and semantic processes of the adaptation of Bushman toponyms by Bantu and European peoples, including folk etymological and associative reinterpretation, and identifies fossilized and disguised Bushman common names embedded in the toponyms.