Khoisan influence discernible in Sotho toponyms Peter E. RAPER Introduction The present investigation forms part of a wide-ranging research proj- ect into Khoisan influence on the toponymic landscape of South Africa. The term Khoisan (also written Khoesan and Khoe-San) refers to the Khoi (Khoikhoi, Khoe, Khoekhoe(n) or ‘Hottentots’) and San (Bushmen), and the languages spoken by these people. At one stage Bushman was regarded as a derogatory name and the term San preferred, but recently Bushman has become acceptable again, and San regarded as a derogatory Khoikhoi name for the Bushmen. A perusal of the Internet on 14 February 2009 indicated that “Although some consider the name Bushmen derogatory as well, it is less so than the term San” (www.diversitysouthafrica.co.za/khoi. html); “The names San and Basarwa are sometimes used, but the people themselves dislike these names and prefer the name Bush- men” (Kids.Net.Au-Encyclopedia>Kalahari Desert); “the name ‘Bushmen’ has only recently become acceptable to some speakers of Hei //om, Ju’/hoan, !X/uu, Kxoe, Nharo and other groups” (www. jstor.org/sici); “The different tribes and clans started using the name Bushmen. But political correctness proclaimed this an insult and declared they should be referred to as San. Where Bushmen merely means they are people of the bush (or close to nature), San was a Khoi word meaning vagrants, people who have nothing. And because of this misguided correctness we now use the more derogatory name for our first inhabitants” (www.southafrica.com/forums/open- board/5901-whats-name.html). For thousands or even millions of years the hunter-gathering Bushmen and their ancestors were the only inhabitants of the sub- continent of Africa (Parkington 2007, 77), and all toponyms (names of geographical features) were of Bushman origin. That remained the situation until about two thousand years ago, when the Khoikhoi and 994566_ONOMA_44_10_Raper_2.indd4566_ONOMA_44_10_Raper_2.indd 116767 221/12/111/12/11 113:203:20 168 PETER E. RAPER African peoples began to enter the region from the Great Lakes regions of Central Africa (Krige 1975, 595-6). The past four hundred years saw the arrival of Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, German and other peoples from Europe and Asia, and the emergence of the Afri- kaans language (Raper 2004, ix). Biological and cultural interaction between these various peoples, including language contact and lan- guage shift, also had an influence on the toponymy of the region. Some existing Bushman place-names were adopted but adapted to the phonological systems of the incoming peoples, some were replaced by other names, and some were translated into other languages, either in part or totally. In the course of time, and particularly over the past few centuries, the Khoisan peoples and their languages have become virtually extinct within the borders of South Africa. However, many of their place- names have survived, albeit in adapted and translated form. Some names were translated by later comers, but most were probably trans- lated by Khoikhoi and Bushmen people themselves, who not only learnt the languages of the ‘colonialists’, but adopted these as their languages of preference. The Khoikhoi peoples tended to favour Dutch, and later Afrikaans, as the preferred language over their mother tongues (Nienaber and Raper 1977, 18, 20). A shift also took place from San languages to Dutch in the Cape, the Free State and Western Transvaal (North-West Province). “By the turn of the twentieth cen- tury … the shift to Afrikaans was almost complete” (Traill 2007, 132). As a result of this process, many Khoisan place-names were translated into Dutch and later Afrikaans, while others were adapted. The present study investigates Sotho toponyms in which Khoikhoi and Bushman influence can be traced, and specifically those in which translated names have preserved the lexical meanings of Sotho names comprising adaptations. Aspects of Khoisan languages The Khoikhoi languages include Griqua (Xri), Kora (Korana, Koranna) and Nama. Bleek’s Bushman dictionary (1956, [iii-iv]) contains words from twenty-nine Bushman languages and dialects. On the basis of similarities in the roots of recorded words from dif- ferent Bushman languages (Traill 1978, 145), the Bushman tribes have been classified or categorized into three groups, namely the 994566_ONOMA_44_10_Raper_2.indd4566_ONOMA_44_10_Raper_2.indd 116868 221/12/111/12/11 113:203:20 KHOISAN INFLUENCE DISCERNIBLE IN SOTHO TOPONUMS 169 Southern, Northern and Central Group (Bleek 1929, i; 1956, iii-iv). These are referred to by the designations S1, S1a, S2, N1, N2, C1, C2 etc. In the present investigation the name of the Bushman language from which the word comes will be given, together with the reference number in brackets, e.g. /Xam (S1), Kung (N2), Naron (C2). The Khoisan languages are characterized by clicks or suction conso- nants, described as follows: /: ‘This sign denotes the dental click’ (Bleek 1956, 266), the dental or alveolar fricative click (Bleek 1929, 13). ‘For this click the release is gentle, making almost a sucking sound. The click is like the Zulu click written c …’ (Bleek 1956, 266). !: ‘This sign denotes the so-called cerebral or palato-alveolar click. This click resembles the Zulu … palato-alveolar click represented by the symbol q …’ (Bleek 1956, 368). !!: ‘The retroflex click… It apparently lies between the palato-alve- olar and the lateral clicks. The tongue tip is released backwards, sliding along the palate, causing a harsh-sounding click which is not “instantaneous”.’ (Bleek 1956, 505). //: ‘The retroflex fricative click’ (Bleek 1929, 13); ‘the lateral click. … The sound produced is exactly the same as for the lateral clicks of Zulu or Nama’ (Bleek 1956, 512). ≠: ‘The alveolar click, formerly known as the palatal click. … The click is instantaneous and cannot be drawn out with friction’ (Bleek 1956, 640). Q: ‘This click denotes the labial click’ (Bleek 1956, 681). This click is usually represented by a circle with a dot in the middle, but here represented as Q. Each of the clicks is pronounced with distinctive releases, accompani- ments or effluxes, such as aspirated, ejected, fricative, glottal, nasal and voiced effluxes. The voiced efflux is indicated as in /gã, the nasal efflux as in /na, the fricative efflux as in /xã, the aspirated efflux as in /ha, and so forth. (Traill 1978, 138). The symbols “ and _ are used to indicate a high and a low tone respectively; a falling tone is indicared by the symbol \ and a rising tone by /. The colon: after a vowel indi- is used to indicate ٤ cates that the vowel is a long one, and the symbol a pressed vowel. 994566_ONOMA_44_10_Raper_2.indd4566_ONOMA_44_10_Raper_2.indd 116969 221/12/111/12/11 113:203:20 170 PETER E. RAPER Aspects of Sotho languages In common with other African (‘Bantu’) languages, Sotho nouns (and place-names) consist of a prefix and a stem or root. “The stem of the noun carries its ‘true’ or ‘real’ meaning, i.e. its lexical meaning. The prefix indicates whether the name is singular or plural; whether the noun is an abstract noun; and what set of concordial agreement should be used so that the noun agrees with the adjectives, pronouns, verbs and other parts of speech in a sentence” (Koopman 2002, 267). Sotho nouns are classified according to their prefixes and form their plural by changing their prefixes. In Sotho there are six different classes of nouns, with their prefixes indicated in bold type (Sharpe 1960, 13): Singular Plural 1. motho (man, person) batho (men, people) 2. motse (village) metse (villages) 3. letsatsi (sun, day) matsatsi (days) 4. sefate (tree) lifate (trees) 5. nku (sheep) linku (sheep) 6. bosiu (night) masiu (nights) Tracing Khoisan influence In tracing Khoisan influence, each place-name and its components or elements are tested for phonological and semantic correspondence against Khoisan (Khoikhoi and/or Bushman) words. Khoisan words and names are generally adapted to Sotho by inter alia the addition of prefixes. The removal of the prefix leaves the stem, which is then compared to phonologically and semantically equivalent or compa- rable Khoisan words. In some cases, however, what at first sight appears to be a Sotho prefix is an adapted Khoisan word, so that the prefixes are also subject to linguistic analysis. The same applies to locative and other suffixes. As Louwrens (1994, 40) points out, “the exact semantic factors which determine the implementation of the locative and diminutive suffixes … need to be investigated further.” Such investigation includes consideration of potential Khoisan influ- ence. In many cases the correspondence between Sotho elements and their Khoisan equivalents will be more clearly discernible than in oth- ers, since the clicks and other sounds of the Khoisan languages would 994566_ONOMA_44_10_Raper_2.indd4566_ONOMA_44_10_Raper_2.indd 117070 221/12/111/12/11 113:203:20 KHOISAN INFLUENCE DISCERNIBLE IN SOTHO TOPONUMS 171 have been altered and adapted to those of Sotho, resulting perhaps in misinterpretation due to folk etymology and analogy. The written rep- resentation of words is sometimes problematic, since different conven- tions of representing sounds are used in different periods and different orthographies. In adapting Khoisan names and words, vowels were reasonably clearly heard and imitated, but the clicks and other sounds less so, and the correspondences between the original words and the adapted ones are sometimes less obvious. Validation criteria are employed wherever possible to ensure the ‘correct’ or most probable etymology. The Sotho language is a Bantu language and thus not cognate with Bushman languages, i.e. not descended from a common ancestral language (Gove 1961, 440). The term cognate is thus used in the pres- ent investigation in the sense of ‘cognate (word)’ given in Webster’s Dictionary (Gove 1961, 440): “Cognate: “c of a word: related in a manner that involves borrowing rather than descent from or as well as descent from an ancestral language - often used with with, sometimes with to” (Gove 1961, 440).