HOTTENTOT PLACE-NAMES. 335 



without much difficulty, which would certainly not have been fhe 

 ease if they had been many centuries separated. They had no 

 intercouroe with each other, and yet towards the close of the 

 seventeenth century an interpreter belonging to a tribe in the 

 neighbourhood of the Cape Peninsula, when accompanying Dutch 

 trading parties, conversed with ease with them all." 



Theal'^ fact is important, liis inference is, of course, an 

 inference only, and would seem to estimate the period of the 

 Hottentot advent into the sub-continent at too recent a date. 



That point, however, apart, wherever they settled they 

 would naturally give to localities and physical features of the 

 territory which they occupied names that would be significant 

 to themselves and appropriate to the locality or feature 

 designated. 



An opportunity occurred to me a few years back, away in 

 the heart of Griqualand West, to take down from the mouth 

 of a European, who had been born in Great Namaqualand and 

 had spent the greater part of his life there, who spoke the 

 Namaqua-Hottentot language fluently, it being- practically the 

 languag-e of his cliildhood, a fairly long list of Namaqua- 

 Hottentot place-names and their meanings. On comparing 

 these, on my return home, with the jN^amaqua-Hottentot words 

 in Kronlein's " Wortschatz der Khoi-Khoin." I found in the 

 great majority of the names on my friend's list that his 

 derivations and those given by Kronlein were practically the 

 same. This seemed to indicate that to one acquainted with the 

 jSTamaqua-Hottentot language the meaning of the place-names 

 was generally apparent. There would, of course, be exceptions, 

 as in the Hottentot name for Cape Town 1 1 Hui- ! peis — ^with 

 reference to which Kronlein and Prof. Halm, both experts, 

 suggest two quite different, yet equally appropriate meanings ; 

 the former connects the first part of the name with I Ihui, to 

 rear the head of a snake, while Hahn (" Tsuni-I I Goam , the 

 Supreme Being of the Ivhoi-Khoin," 1881, pp. 34-35), connects 

 it with " I Ihv, the root of a word meaning* " to condense," 

 hence I Ihus, an old word for cloud, which word is still used. 

 In the one case the word refers to the mountain upreared at 

 the back of the town, in the other to the dense mass of cloud 

 which forms so frequently on the top of the mountain. There 

 may be an instance or two of this sort, but for the most part 

 the meaning of the Namaqua-Hottentot i)lace-names can be 

 traced; and, as might be expected from a primitive people, 

 are almost entirely descriptive, setting forth some physical 

 feature of the locality named, or sometliing concerning its 

 fauna or flora. There are very few that have reference to 

 events, and, where they have such reference, the events are 

 of a comparatively trivial nature ; yet in that sense they may 

 be called historic. To the former belong such place-names as : 

 I Ao-I I goms (Hot. lais, fire; I Ir/cnni, water; the x is locative), 

 this is the Hottentot name of both Warmbad and Windhoek in 

 Great Namaqualand, the reference being to the hot springs 

 at these two places. Guidaos (Hot. guih, Euphorhia maure- 

 fanica-.daos, a poort). Melkboschpoort, Great Namaqualand . 

 Kharn daos (Hot. a-ami, a lion; daos, a poort). Lion Poort. 



