Zulu Bird Names: a Progression Over the Decades (I)

South African Journal of African Languages ISSN: 0257-2117 (Print) 2305-1159 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjal20 Zulu bird names: A progression over the decades (I) Adrian Koopman To cite this article: Adrian Koopman (2018) Zulu bird names: A progression over the decades (I), South African Journal of African Languages, 38:3, 261-267, DOI: 10.1080/02572117.2018.1518029 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2018.1518029 Published online: 29 Nov 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 4 View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjal20 South African Journal of African Languages 2018, 38(3): 261–267 Copyright © NISC (Pty) Ltd South African Journal of African Languages ISSN 0257-2117 EISSN 2305-1159 https://doi.org/10.1080/02572117.2018.1518029 Zulu bird names: A progression over the decades (I) [Part one: The first hundred years, from Delegorgue to Samuelson] Adrian Koopman Faculty of Arts and Design, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa Email: [email protected] For nearly 250 years, beginning with Linnaeus in 1758 and continuing through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, birds have been given scientific and vernacular names created by deliberate, conscious, and methodological taxonomical naming processes. On the other hand, Zulu names for birds, for centuries only residing in oral tradition, have only found their way into print through being recorded in writing. In this process, oral knowledge is recast as written knowledge. This article looks at the first hundred years of such recording of Zulu names, beginning with the first settlers and explorers in what is now KwaZulu-Natal and continuing through to the publication of Samuelson’s dictionary in 1923. The article, and its planned follow-up article, looks at the contribution of various lexicographers, including Bishop Colenso, the Reverend AT Bryant, and CM Doke and BW Vilakazi, and then interfaces their dictionaries with various works on southern African birds, beginning with Layard’s 1867 Birds of South Africa, looking closely at Woodward and Woodward’s 1899 Natal Birds, and ending with the seventh edition of Roberts Birds of Southern Africa, published in 2005. The primary focus is on how the Zulu oral tradition of bird knowledge has increasingly been revealed to the Western world through the efforts of naturalists and lexicographers. The article concludes with a brief look at recent developments in Zulu bird names between 2013 and 2017. Introduction 3. A miscellanea of various publications such as travel narratives like those of Adulphe Delegorgue (published In European and Western societies, since the time of in English in 1990 and 1997) and Godfrey’s 1941 Linnaeus in the eighteenth century, the naming of birds Bird-Lore of the Eastern Cape Province. has been run on two different but parallel naming systems: In order to discuss these Zulu names properly, they first the Latin-based binomial scientific nomenclature, and the need to be put into an onomastic context. vernacular names of the different countries and groups of people. Obviously, in any given ornithological publication, Zulu bird names in a wider onomastic context the essential vernacular language will be the language the publication is written in, in other words, if the book is written The four volumes of Stark and Sclater’s (1900–1906) The in German, the two types of names will be the Latin-based Birds of South Africa, as with every ornithological work scientific names and the German vernacular names. In the consulted for this article, use scientific binomials. Stark ornithological works on southern African birds discussed and Sclater are particularly diligent in recording all previous in this article, the essential vernacular names are English, synonyms, listing not only the authors of each synonym, but as all the works I have consulted are written in English. I other writers who have used each and every synonym in say ‘essential’ here as in many of the publications other their own works. vernacular language bird names are given: Dutch, French, In addition, however, they introduce the reader to a Xhosa, Zulu and any of the other Bantu languages spoken (perhaps unintentional) classification of vernacular names. in the southern African region.1 For each entry for each species of bird they give a number The primary focus of this and the planned follow-up article of different types of name, and unusually for any work of a is the Zulu bird names, and in examining the recording of biological nature, they explain and define the type of name Zulu bird names in the past 200 years, the material reviewed they are using. Volume four of their work is much more has been of three main types:2 specific about the different types of names. It distinguishes 1. Ornithological publications, ranging from the earliest between (in order of their appearance in each entry for each (Layard’s 1875–1884 Birds of South Africa) to the latest bird species): (Chittenden, Davies & Weiersbye’s 2016 second edition 1. The ‘current’ scientific name, i.e. the synonym selected of the Roberts Field Guide); as valid at the time of writing; 2. Zulu dictionaries, from the earliest (Bishop Colenso’s 2. The authors’ own choice of English vernacular names 1884 Zulu-English Dictionary) to the latest (Nyembezi’s out of the various possibilities. This is their ‘default’ 1992 Isichazimazwi Sanamuhla Nangomuso [A vernacular name, or ‘book name’; Dictionary of Today and Tomorrow]); and 3. The various scientific synonyms – up to nine in some cases; The South African Journal of African Languages is co-published by NISC (Pty) Ltd and Informa UK Limited (trading as Taylor & Francis Group) 262 Koopman 4. The names of what are described as ‘some authors’, i.e. own son, Henry Francis Fynn Jr., was given the name the English vernacular names used by other writers of uGwalagwala because he always wore the feather of a ornithological works; loerie (Z. ‘igwalagwala’) in his hat.4 5. The names used by Dutch colonists, presumably only Another early arrival in colonial Natal was the French orally, otherwise they would also be ‘some authors’; traveller Adulphe Delegorgue. He travelled in what is now 6. The names used by English colonists, often specified as KwaZulu-Natal and the province of Limpopo between 1838 being from ‘The Colony’ (i.e. the Western Cape of today) and 1844, and took pains to try and learn Zulu, and to identify or from Natal; by name the plants, animals and birds he saw around him. 7. The names of a variety of different peoples and language His Vocabulaire de la Langue Zoulouse (‘Vocabulary of the groups including Xhosa, Zulu, ‘Bechuanas’, ‘Matabilis’ Zulu language’) was an appendix to the second volume of and such disparate entities as ‘Zambesi natives’. his two-volume Voyage dans l’Afrique Australe (‘Travels in For these they frequently name their sources, giving Southern Africa’), published in 1848.5 It contains more than for example ‘Ugaka of Natal Zulus (Woodward)’ for 650 entries, only 15 of which are the names of birds. The Cossypha bicolor Noisy Robin-Chat, and ‘Invanana of following are examples: Matabele (Ayres)’ for Crateropus kirki Kirk’s Babbler; and ‘ekoikoye’: green crested touraco [= Knysna Loerie 8. The names of specialist groups like sailors and sealers, = Z. ‘igwalagwala’] especially for the sea-based birds like albatrosses, ‘ikoalakoala’: pheasant, francolin [= ‘igwalagwala’, terns, skuas and the like. the name for the Knysna Loerie above] The different onomastic categories of bird names in Stark ‘ikoé’: ostrich [= Z. ‘intshe’] and Sclater’s four volumes of the birds of South Africa ‘iploup-loulou’: masked barbet (Pygonias suggest that a typology of bird names is long overdue, but personnatus) [It has not been possible to identify that must be the task of a separate study. this entry.] In this article, out of all the possible categories of names ‘izikova’: owl [this is perfectly recognisable as Z. suggested by Stark and Sclater, the focus is only on the ‘isikhova’, although D. has given the plural form] Zulu names, which fall under item seven in the list of name ‘landa’: egret, Ardea bubuleas [= Z. ‘ilanda’] types given above. The main section of this article is ordered ‘monkongo’: oriole [a somewhat abbreviated form of chronologically, starting with the earliest mention of Zulu bird ‘umgoqongo’] names. ‘omkoloani’: hornbill [within the limits of D. spelling system, a perfectly accurate rendering of Earliest mention of Zulu bird names ‘umkholwane’] ‘omoucé’: Le Vaillant’s caterpillar destroyer [could Henry Francis Fynn was one of the earliest arrivals at Port this be ‘umunswi’, the Zulu generic name for Natal (later Durban) in 1824, and he kept a diary which thrushes?] recorded his daily activities during the years 1824 to 1836. ‘tingou’: drongo [= Z. ‘intengu’] There are a number of references to birds in this diary, ranging from the vultures that gathered at Shaka’s ‘Cliff The spelling here is quite different to the spelling used of Execution’ to the crane feathers delivered to Shaka as today, but we must remember that at the time Delegorgue tribute, but none are referred to by their Zulu names. The wrote the account of his travels and published them, there only Zulu bird name in this publication is the name the Zulus was no standard form of writing Zulu, and Delegorgue spelt themselves gave to Fynn, described in the following: them phonetically as if they were French words. They range Soon after Fynn’s arrival at Port Natal he visited the main from highly accurate words, as in the name ‘omkoloani’ residence of King Shaka kaSenzangakhona where he was (today ‘umkholwane’) to names which are untraceable ‘…asked to gallop round the circle two or three times in the today, such as ‘iploup-loulou’, where not only the Zulu midst of tremendous shouting of the words, “Ujojo wokhalo!” name is untraceable, but the English ‘masked barbet’ and (the sharp or active finch of the ridge)’3 (Fynn, 1950: 72).

Load more