ORIGIN AxND MEANINCi OF THE NAME 

 " HOTTENTOT." 



By Rev. Prof. Johannes du Plessis, B.A., B.D. 



The Bushmen, the Hottentots and the Kaffirs are the names 

 under which we know the three great famihes of natives with 

 whom the earHest colonists came in contact. The first name 

 explains itself, the last is without doubt the Arabic kafir (un- 

 believer), and was bestowed upon the Bantu tribes of the east 

 coast by the Mohammedan traders. But the name Hottentot 

 is still wrapped in considerable obscurity, and the derivations 

 hitherto proposed have not been wholly satisfactory. In deal- 

 ing with the explanations that have been ofifered of the origin of 

 the name, there are some which I think we are safe in rejecting, 

 some which are certainly possible, and one which I venture to 

 suggest as highly probable. 



I. Rejected Explanations. 



In the " Transactions of the Philological Society " for i860, 

 H. Wedgwood threw out the suggestion that the word Hottentot 

 meant originally a stammerer. " When we enquire how the 

 Dutch would naturally represent the sound of stammering, we 

 find that they make use of the verbs hateren and tatereii, Ixith 

 obviously imitative." He also quotes from the dictionary of 

 Hexham ( 1647) to show that hateren meant to stutter, and 

 tateren, to speak with a shrill noise. 



Danby P. Fry, in the volume of the " Transactions " quoted 

 above, says that in a Dutch and German dictionary published by 

 Kramer in 1719, he found the word Hortentot in the -ense of a 

 stammerer, " and this," he adds, " may be the word referred to 

 by Dapper." He also adduces the authority of Judge Water- 

 meyer, whose words are : "Dapper asserts that a word like 

 Hottentot was a word in ordinary use in Holland in his day to 

 signify stammerer. . . . Dutchmen themselves would not 

 believe it to have been a word in use in Holland before it was 

 applied to the South African natives, but for the conclusive evi- 

 dence of such a passage as this in Dapper." 



Dr. Theophilus PTahn, again, in his " Tsuni-Goam," sup- 

 plies us with another suggested derivation. " On account of 

 their curious language, abounding in harsh faucal sounds and 

 clicks, the Dutch called them Hottentots. Hottentot, or Hiitten- 

 tiit, means in Frisian or Low German a quack ; and therefore the 

 old Dutchmen, who were so much puzzled and did not know 

 what to make of such an unheard-of language, more akin to the 

 chat of a parrot than to human speech, called it Hottentot, i.e., 

 mere gibberish" (p. 2). In support of this view he quotes the 

 Idiotieon Hamburgensc ( 1755) : " Hiittentuth, Schimpfwort auf 

 einen unniitzen Artzt, welcher beim gemeinen Mann heisset : 

 * Doctor Hiittentiith, die den Liiden dat water besiiht ' " (p. 32). 



