Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 May 17

= May 17 =

Endonym of South Africa?
When I tried to google I could just get few mere translations/transliterations of words 'south' and 'Africa' in some native languages.

Did South Africa* had any endonyms in native languages from pre-colonial times?

&#32;Bookku   (talk) 05:28, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Geographical land or part there of, of the present country Republic of South Africa.
 * The endonym for South Africa in the official language of the Zulu people is iRiphabliki yaseNingizimu; or, informally: Mzansi ("South"). --136.56.52.157 (talk) 07:36, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The article iRiphabhuliki yaseNingizimu Afrika on the Zulu Wikipedia also uses the informal name iNingizimu Afrika, a direct calque of South Africa or Zuid Afrika. However, "South Africa" is a concept created by the colonialization process. Since the concept did not exist in pre-colonial times, it will not have had a name. --Lambiam 12:01, 17 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Bookku -- There was almost certainly no term for South Africa as a whole before Europeans arrived, because it was never culturally unified. Notoriously, the crops that the Bantu peoples brought with them in their migrations from the north did not allow them to establish long-term successful agricultural settlements to the southwest of the Great Fish River, so there was a basic Khoisan vs. Bantu dichotomy.  And of course there were many local groups of both peoples. AnonMoos (talk) 10:41, 17 May 2023 (UTC)


 * As noted, South Africa wasn't a thing until 1910, previously it had been semi-independent colonies in the area; even those were built more-or-less arbitrarily by the colonizers, and don't have any connection to the pre-colonial peoples who lived in the area. Wikipedia has an article titled History of Southern Africa which will lead you in the right direction for understanding the political and cultural organization of the area pre-colonization.  -- Jayron 32 12:22, 17 May 2023 (UTC)