Khoekhoe

Khoekhoe people
Khoekhoen
Total population
	333,400
Languages
	Khoekhoegowab
Religion
	Christianity
Related ethnic groups
	Sotho-Tswana peoples, Xhosa people

Khoekhoe (/ˈkɔɪkɔɪ/ KOY-koy) (or Khoikhoi in former orthography)^[a] are the traditionally nomadic pastoralist indigenous population of South Africa. They are often grouped with the hunter-gatherer San (literally "Foragers") peoples. The accepted term for the two people being Khoisan.^[2] The designation "Khoekhoe" is actually a kare or praise address, not an ethnic endonym, but it has been used in the literature as an ethnic term for Khoe-speaking peoples of Southern Africa, particularly pastoralist groups, such as the Griqua, Gona, Nama, Khoemana and Damara nations. The Khoekhoe were once known as Hottentots, a term now considered offensive.^[3]

The Khoekhoe are thought to have diverged from other humans 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.^[b]^[5] In the 17th century, the Khoekhoe maintained large herds of Nguni cattle in the Cape region.^{[according to whom?]}^{[citation needed]} They mostly gave up nomadic pastoralism in the 19th to 20th century.^[6]

Their Khoekhoe language is related to certain dialects spoken by foraging San peoples of the Kalahari, such as the Khwe and Tshwa, forming the Khoe language family. Khoekhoe subdivisions today are the Nama people of Namibia, Botswana and South Africa (with numerous clans), the Damara of Namibia, the Orana clans of South Africa (such as Nama or Ngqosini), the Khoemana or Griqua nation of South Africa, and the Gqunukhwebe or Gona clans which fall under the Xhosa-speaking polities.^[7]

The Xirikua clans (Griqua) developed their own ethnic identity in the 19th century and settled in Griqualand West. Later, they formed another independent state in Kwazulu Natal named Griqualand East, losing their independence barely a decade later to the British. They are related to the same kinds of clan formations as Rehoboth Basters, who could also be considered a "Khoekhoe" people.^{[according to whom?]}^{[citation needed]}

^ "The old Dutch also did not know that their so-called Hottentots formed only one branch of a wide-spread race, of which the other branch divided into ever so many tribes, differing from each other totally in language [...] While the so-called Hottentots called themselves Khoikhoi (men of men, i.e. men par excellence), they called those other tribes Sā, the Sonqua of the Cape Records [...] We should apply the term Hottentot to the whole race, and call the two families, each by the native name, that is the one, the Khoikhoi, the so-called Hottentot proper; the other the Sān (Sā) or Bushmen." Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni-||Goam: The Supreme Being to the Khoi-Khoi (1881), p. 3.
^ Alan Barnard (1992). Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples. New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-42865-1.
^ "Hottentot, n. and adj." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/88829. Accessed 13 May 2018. Citing G. S. Nienaber, 'The origin of the name "Hottentot" ', African Studies, 22:2 (1963), 65–90, doi:10.1080/00020186308707174. See also Johannes Du Plessis (1917). "Report of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science". pp. 189–193. Retrieved 5 July 2010.. Strobel, Christoph (2008). "A Note on Terminology". The Testing Grounds of Modern Empire: The Making of Colonial Racial Order in the American Ohio Country and the South African Eastern Cape, 1770s–1850s. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-1-4331-0123-6. Desmond, Adrian; Moore, James (2014). "Living in Slave Countries". Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-547-52775-8.Jeremy I. Levitt, ed. (2015). "Female "things" in international law". Black Women and International Law. Cambridge University Press. p. 291. ISBN 978-1-107-02130-3. "Bring Back the 'Hottentot Venus'". Web.mit.edu. 15 June 1995. Archived from the original on 16 December 2020. Retrieved 13 August 2012. "Hottentot". American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fifth ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2011. "'Hottentot Venus' goes home". BBC News. 29 April 2002. Retrieved 13 August 2017.
^ Pargeter, Justin; Mackay, Alex; Mitchell, Peter; Shea, John; Stewart, Brian (2016). "Primordialism and the 'Pleistocene San' of southern Africa". Antiquity. 90 (352).
^ Al-Hindi, Dana R.; Reynolds, Austin W.; Henn, Brenna M. (2022), Grine, Frederick E. (ed.), "Genetic Divergence Within Southern Africa During the Later Stone Age", Hofmeyr: A Late Pleistocene Human Skull from South Africa, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 19–28, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-07426-4_3, ISBN 978-3-031-07426-4, retrieved 2 January 2025
^ Richards, John F. (2003). "8: Wildlife and Livestock in South Africa". The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. California World History Library. Vol. 1. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 296. ISBN 978-0-520-93935-6. Retrieved 17 November 2016. The nomadic pastoral Khoikhoi kraals were dispersed and their organization and culture broken. However, their successors, the trekboers and their Khoikhoi servants, managed flocks and herds similar to those of the Khoikhois. The trekboers had adapted to African-style, extensive pastoralism in this region. In order to obtain optimal pasture for their animals, early settlers imitated the Khoikhoi seasonal transhumance movements and those observed in the larger wild herbivores.
^ Güldemann, Tom (2006), "Structural Isoglosses between Khoekhoe and Tuu: The Cape as a Linguistic Area", Linguistic Areas, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 99–134, doi:10.1057/9780230287617_5, ISBN 978-1-349-54544-5

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[Hahn-1] "The old Dutch also did not know that their so-called Hottentots formed only one branch of a wide-spread race, of which the other branch divided into ever so many tribes, differing from each other totally in language [...] While the so-called Hottentots called themselves Khoikhoi (men of men, i.e. men par excellence), they called those other tribes Sā, the Sonqua of the Cape Records [...] We should apply the term Hottentot to the whole race, and call the two families, each by the native name, that is the one, the Khoikhoi, the so-called Hottentot proper; the other the Sān (Sā) or Bushmen." Theophilus Hahn, Tsuni-||Goam: The Supreme Being to the Khoi-Khoi (1881), p. 3.

[Barnard1992-3] Alan Barnard (1992). Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples. New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-42865-1.

[Hottentot-4] "Hottentot, n. and adj." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/88829. Accessed 13 May 2018. Citing G. S. Nienaber, 'The origin of the name "Hottentot" ', African Studies, 22:2 (1963), 65–90, doi:10.1080/00020186308707174. See also Johannes Du Plessis (1917). "Report of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science". pp. 189–193. Retrieved 5 July 2010.. Strobel, Christoph (2008). "A Note on Terminology". The Testing Grounds of Modern Empire: The Making of Colonial Racial Order in the American Ohio Country and the South African Eastern Cape, 1770s–1850s. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-1-4331-0123-6. Desmond, Adrian; Moore, James (2014). "Living in Slave Countries". Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-547-52775-8.Jeremy I. Levitt, ed. (2015). "Female "things" in international law". Black Women and International Law. Cambridge University Press. p. 291. ISBN 978-1-107-02130-3. "Bring Back the 'Hottentot Venus'". Web.mit.edu. 15 June 1995. Archived from the original on 16 December 2020. Retrieved 13 August 2012. "Hottentot". American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fifth ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2011. "'Hottentot Venus' goes home". BBC News. 29 April 2002. Retrieved 13 August 2017.

[5] Pargeter, Justin; Mackay, Alex; Mitchell, Peter; Shea, John; Stewart, Brian (2016). "Primordialism and the 'Pleistocene San' of southern Africa". Antiquity. 90 (352).

[7] Al-Hindi, Dana R.; Reynolds, Austin W.; Henn, Brenna M. (2022), Grine, Frederick E. (ed.), "Genetic Divergence Within Southern Africa During the Later Stone Age", Hofmeyr: A Late Pleistocene Human Skull from South Africa, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 19–28, doi:10.1007/978-3-031-07426-4_3, ISBN 978-3-031-07426-4, retrieved 2 January 2025

[8] Richards, John F. (2003). "8: Wildlife and Livestock in South Africa". The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. California World History Library. Vol. 1. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 296. ISBN 978-0-520-93935-6. Retrieved 17 November 2016. The nomadic pastoral Khoikhoi kraals were dispersed and their organization and culture broken. However, their successors, the trekboers and their Khoikhoi servants, managed flocks and herds similar to those of the Khoikhois. The trekboers had adapted to African-style, extensive pastoralism in this region. In order to obtain optimal pasture for their animals, early settlers imitated the Khoikhoi seasonal transhumance movements and those observed in the larger wild herbivores.

[9] Güldemann, Tom (2006), "Structural Isoglosses between Khoekhoe and Tuu: The Cape as a Linguistic Area", Linguistic Areas, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 99–134, doi:10.1057/9780230287617_5, ISBN 978-1-349-54544-5

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Khoekhoe

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