The Dictionary of Southern African Place Names - now in its 4th edition - helps you sort your Komkhulu from your Kommetjie with the most comprehensive glossary of Southern African towns, villages, railway stations, mountains, rivers and beaches. The 9 000 short entries incorporate data from sources dating as far back as 1486, encapsulating the linguistic and cultural heritage of all the peoples of the subcontinent, past and present. In this highly readable book the expert authors take you on a fascinating journey of the highways and byways of Southern Africa. Whether you are a motorist, an adventurer or merely an armchair traveller, this book has a multitude of facts and details that will fascinate you. This is much more than a reference book - it gives an insight into what shapes a place and its people through our heroes, events, beliefs, values, fears and aspirations.

Geographic dictionary of the place names of South Africa. Includes historical origins of names and pronunciation guides.

This volume examines the discursive relations between indigenous, colonial and post-colonial legacies of place-naming in Africa in terms of the production of urban space and place. It is conducted by tracing and analysing place-naming processes, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa during colonial times (British, French, Belgian, Portuguese), with a considerable attention to both the pre-colonial and post-colonial situations. By combining in-depth area studies research – some of the contributions are of ethnographic quality – with colonial history, planning history and geography, the authors intend to show that culture matters in research on place names. This volume goes beyond the recent understanding obtained in critical studies of nomenclature, normally based on lists of official names, that place naming reflects the power of political regimes, nationalism, and ideology.

Over the last 30 years, a fascinating variety of new place names have been given in South Africa.