Borrowed fromDutchHottentot, its first known use in Dutch being in the 1650s. The third edition of theOxford English Dictionary concluded in 2008 thathottentot came into English in the seventeenth century. But it finds that no definitive etymology of Dutchhottentot can so far be given:
A very large number of different etymologies for the name have been suggested ... The most frequently repeated suggestion ... is that the word was a spec. use of a formally identical Dutch word meaning ‘stammerer, stutterer’, which came to be applied to the Khoekhoe and San people on account of the clicks characteristic of their languages. However, evidence for the earlier general use appears to be lacking. Another frequent suggestion is that the people were so named after one or more words which early European visitors to southern Africa heard in chants accompanying dances of the Khoekhoe or San ... but the alleged chant is rendered in different ways in different 17th-cent. sources, and some of the accounts may be based on hearsay rather than first-hand knowledge.[1]
It does seem clear, however, thathottentot was anexonym, that is, not the Khoikhoi's own name for themselves but rather a foreign term applied to them.
Hottentot (pluralHottentots)
- (archaic, now offensive) A member of theKhoekhoe group of peoples.
- 1798-1801, Lady Ann Barnard,Letters and Journals
- I was told that theHottentots were uncommonly ugly and disgusting, but I do not think them so bad. Their features are small and their cheekbones immense, but they have a kind expression and countenance.
2014, Jirō Tanaka,The Bushmen: A Half-century Chronicle of Transformations in Hunter-gatherer Life and Ecology, Apollo Books,→ISBN, page 2:They were called "Bushmen" because they led a nomadic life based on hunting and gathering in bushveld. The first written appearance of the Khoisan people, represented by the Bushmen and theHottentots, dates back to the tenth century.
- (archaic, loosely, now offensive) A member of the broaderKhoisan group of peoples.
1978, Patricia Storrar,Portrait of Plettenberg Bay:The Hottentots (Khoisan peoples) once an independent nation but whose simple tribal system had disintegrated rapidly as they were relentlessly displaced from their traditional grazing grounds and driven deep into the still uninhabited interior[…]
2007,Frontiers:The Hottentots (Khoisan) of either sex, young and old, who were in the boor's service, always choose to sleep in the fireplace.
2012, Richard Elphick,The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa, University of Virginia Press,→ISBN:The Dutch colonists in this frontier district, two years after an uprising of the Khoisan (“Hottentots”), were wary of the newly installed British regime at the Cape of Good Hope.
2014, Patrick Brantlinger,Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930, Cornell University Press,→ISBN:First, in 1828, all legal disabilities on the free people of colour, particularly theKhoisan [Hottentots], were removed by Ordinance 50.
- Any of several fish of the genusPachymetopon, in the familySparidae.
a member of the Khoekhoe people
—see alsoKhoekhoefish of the genus Pachymetopon
Hottentot
- Thelanguage of theKhoekhoe,remarkable for itsclicks.
- Synonyms:Hottentotlanguage,Khoekhoe
1912 (date written),[George] Bernard Shaw, “Pygmalion”, inAndrocles and the Lion,Overruled, Pygmalion, London:Constable and Company, published1916,→OCLC, Act III,pages157–158:Ive tried her with every[…] possible sort of sound that a human being can make—[…] Continental dialects, African dialects,Hottentot[…] clicks, things it took me years to get hold of; and[…] she picks them up like a shot, right away, as if she had[…] been at it all her life.
language of the Khoekhoe
—see alsoKhoekhoe- Webster's International Dictionary 1902.
- Jean Bradford: A dictionary of South African English: Oxford 1978.
- ^"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.
Likely formed in reference to the click sounds of Khoekhoe. Already attested in Van Riebeeck's journal in 1652.
- IPA(key): /ˈɦɔ.tə(n)ˌtɔt/
- Hyphenation:Hot‧ten‧tot
Hottentot m (pluralHottentotten,diminutiveHottentotje n)
- (now offensive) aKhoekhoe person, a member of the native people of southwestern Africa[from mid 17th c.]
- Synonyms:Khoi,Khoikhoi
Khoikhoi on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Pachymetopon on Wikispecies.Wikispecies