190 ORIGIN AND MEANING OF iMAME " HOTTENTOT.'^ 



I feel that I, for my part, cannot accept these ingenious 

 explanations. My first objection is this, that the men who were 

 the earliest visitors to our shores were not learned philologists, 

 who could put words like haieren and tateren together and coin 

 a new word; nor would it occur to them to apply to the dirty 

 and thievish natives a name that was opprobiously used to desig- 

 nate a quack. They were rough sailors, who would be likely 

 to designate a strange people by some striking characteristic of 

 custom or speech, and most probably in some imitative term. 

 My other objection to the proposed explanations is that they 

 place the cart before the horse ; in other words, they explain 

 the more ancient by the more recent, instead of vice versa. 

 Hortentot in the sense of a stammerer, and Hottentot in the 

 sense of a quack, are not the origin of the name as applied to 

 the Cape natives, but are to be explained from the latter. In 

 the second quarter of the seventeenth century the word Hotten- 

 tot must have been quite a well-known designation for the Cape 

 strandloopers, since van Riebeeck, in his " Dagverhaal," con- 

 stantly uses it without explanation. The dictionary of Kramer, 

 on the other hand, and the Idioticon Hamburgense were only 

 published in the eighteenth century. The conclusion is plain, 

 that the word Hottentot had by that time become so common that 

 it was used to designate a stammerer in Holland and a quack 

 in Germany ; just as to-day it is used as a schimpzvoord, or term 

 of oppro'bium, in Cape Dutch. 



Let me now pass to the 



n. Possible Explanations. 



The French missionary, Arbousset, travelling through Cen- 

 tral South Africa in 1836, says of the language of the Hotten- 

 tots that it is harsh and broken, and uttered with strong aspira- 

 tions from the chest. " C'est comme si Ton n'entendait jamais 

 que hot en tot. Aussi n'est-ce pas sans raison qu'on a dit d'eux 

 qu'ils gloussent comme les dindons." ("Relation d'un Voyage," 

 p. 480.) This is, of course, nothing but the old onomatopoetic 

 derivation that we find very commonly in the books of the ear- 

 liest travellers. 



Wouter Schouten, who visited the Cape in 1658 on his way 



to the East Indies, says in his '' Reys-togten "* that the Hottentots 



are 



Wilde menschen, die haer langs strant met heele troepen aen ons 

 vertoonden. Deze worden Hottentotten. wegens haer klokkende spraek, 

 die naer het gelnyt der kalkoense hanen gelijkt, hij ons en 00k andere 

 natien genoemt. .... Zij worden van wegens haer vvildheyt en klok- 

 kende spraek, die al hakkelende ver iiyt de keel schijnt voort te komen, 

 gewoonelijk Hottentotten genoemt." 



The language of Dapper on this ((uestion deserves to be 

 quoted in full, for upon his remarks not a few theories have been 

 built, for w^hich (to my mind) Dapper cannot be legitimately 

 appealed to as authority. His " Afrika," which appeared in 1688,. 

 has the following upon the speech of the Hottentots : — 



' .3rd ed.. 1, 8, and 2, 182. 



