A list of common Xhosa words. About 15 percent of Zulu and Xhosa words have clicks, including the name of the language Xhosa. Some languages of southern Africa are famous for having them, thanks in part to being featured in such cultural vectors as the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy and Miriam Makeba's song "Qongqothwane," better known as "The Click Song." First, human societies have in general started out as hunter-gatherer societies, and some still are, while many of the Khoisan peoples haven't been hunter-gatherers for a long time, so why only the Khoisan? For the ‘X’ click, you place the side of the tongue against the teeth and inhale, making a clicking sound. But you could also just swap in another sound. They are completely unrelated to the Khoisan languages; the Niger-Congo languages originated in and around present-day Nigeria and spread as their speakers spread. The second factor is that as clicks became associated with polite speech, people would use them more generally in words when they wished to sound polite, even if the words weren't names they needed to avoid. Certain words would get variants that were clickless for general use but clicked for polite speech. The Xhosa Culture: Xhosa is the second largest cultural group among the Zulu-speaking population in South Africa. And from this, there came to be some word pairs with different shades of meaning — for instance, a click-free word meaning "pour out" and a clicked word meaning "sprinkle ceremonially." Andiswa, female, increase. The Xhosa language (Isixhosa), of which there are variations, is part of the Nguni language group. Xhosa names for baby girls, with 7 entries. There’s even some Xhosa rap with a good amount of clicking in it. There are some problems with this idea. Xhosa is one of the 11 official languages recognized by the South African Constitution, and in 2006 it was determined that just over 7 million South Africans speak Xhosa as a home language. usage Close. The delicate art of using linguistics to identify an anonymous author, Wonder Woman 1984 is shockingly regressive, The greatness of A Charlie Brown Christmas, Makeba's "The Click Song" is perhaps the most famous audible illustration. Picture yourself sneaking up on a deer. Amakwayi ,Ongconde, o Togu o Tshiwo.Buku is the surname of Michael who belong to Amakwayi o Ngcondentshaba From Kingwilliamstown, Eastern Cape,South Africa.His home village is Ndevana near Zwelitsha,Phakamisa and Ilitha Township. The ‘Q’ click is produced by placing the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth and snapping it downwards. gender. Pronunciation of Xhosa Names of People and Places The Xhosa language is difficult for native English speakers. 1. Zulu, the most common South African language, is widely spoken in Gauteng and along the East Coast in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Here are some Xhosa names for girls and their meanings that you can consider the next time you are blessed with a baby girl. If you do it right, you should make a loud ‘clop’ sound. Browse through our alphabetical selection of baby names, including the meaning and origin for each name. Xhosa is a Girl name, meaning South African tribe in African origin. Or the t in tea? Article from momjunction.com. I had heard of African names with clicks before, like ǂXóõ, ǂHõã and !Kung, but I thought they were limited to just a few words. any masculine feminine unisex-Usage, language or place. Look, a lateral click is a common sound used to get a horse to move. The intermarriages probably happened about the same way intermarriages between, say, Americans and Canadians happen — or perhaps a bit more often. The more natural and automatic it is to integrate into language, the more languages will have it — nearly all languages have some version of the vowels "ah," "oo," and "ee," for instance. As a result, South Africa is known to be the native land of the Xhosa folk. Xhosa is a language with clicks, borrowed from the neighboring Khoisan languages from South and East Africa, such as Taa (or !Xóõ), !Kung (or !Xũ), Juǀʼhoans (or Zhuǀ’hõasi), and Khoekhoe (or Nàmá). Xhosa is a name that's been used primarily by parents who are considering baby names for girls. But what sound could you use that wouldn't make it a different word that might mean something else, and would still make it understandable? It will help you to generate 1000's of cool Xhosa Names which you can use in books, novels, games, or whatever fantasy world you want to use it. If you can provide recordings, please contact me. Enter a standard character and Right-Click (Macintosh Ctrl + … It is a tonal language, governed by the noun - which d… For generating Xhosa Names simply scroll down and click on the Get Male Names, Get Female Names Button to randomly generate 10 Xhosa Names. Surprisingly, Africa isn’t the only continent where clicks are part of the language. Xhosa is also the 2,239,220 th most common given name worldwide, held by 23 people. Akhona, both, present. Well, actually, most others do — they just don't use them as sounds in words. They belong to the group of Niger-Congo languages broadly called Bantu (except in South Africa, where the designation Bantu was used in racist policies). Xhosa (/ ˈ k oʊ s ə /; Xhosa: isiXhosa [isikǁʰóːsa]) is one of the official languages of South Africa.Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. “Everywhere we go, people often ask me, ‘How do you make that noise?’” she said during an interview in 1979. It's one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, alongside several languages part of … (Pop-ups must be enabled.) The words listed below are not the most common words, but a broad sampling of words.See the Word Lists page for more details. First, some words were the same for all people — the name of the king, for instance, but also the names of some animals and things that people wished to avoid trouble with. The language, now believed to be extinct, had included nasal clicks. If you’re having trouble understanding the click and its use, think of it this way – it’s just like any other consonant used in the English language. Xhosa falls under the umbrella of the Bantu languages, and is a representative of the south-western Nguni family. There are some problems with that theory. In her 1957 hit single, Pata Pata, you can clearly hear clicks in the lyrics. Click on a name to read the meaning, popularity, pronunciation and other useful information. Like Zulu and the almost extinct languages of the San people it contains clicks and gutturals that are nearly impossible for English tongues. Here's our collection of some latest and modern Xhosa baby names with their meanings.. . The deer bolts, of course. The ‘C’ click is made by placing the tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth near the incisors and making a ‘tsk tsk’ sound. Andisiwe, female, more increase. Not all clicking languages are as popular. The language Miriam was talking about is Xhosa, the second most common language in South Africa. Xhosa is a tonal language with 3 click consonants: 'c' for a dental click, 'x' for a lateral click, and 'q' for a post-alveolar click; the word "isiXhosa" contains a lateral click. //-->. Xhosa names are not listed within the top 1000. In either case, Top 100 Baby Names Search was designed to aid you in your search for the perfect name for your baby. If you liked this story, like & follow us on Facebook for more. This is not the sort of thing that is generally supposed to happen in languages. Xhosa Baby Names Below you will find our wide selection of Xhosa boy names and Xhosa girl names, as categorized by our name experts research, our readers feedback and other sources. First of all, the relation between the Bantu cultures and the Khoisan cultures at the time of the borrowing was more of a friendly trading relationship, not one of military conflict. Imagine, now, if we started using clicks in our words like other sounds. Not only would you not say William or Jackson, you also wouldn't say will, jack, jacks, or maybe even yum or son. I mean sticking them in the middle of words we already have. As well them as any — and they went a long time without a lot of interference from other languages, so the clicks didn't get pushed out. Ayabonga, male, they are grateful. Second, whispering and gestures have served hunters elsewhere just fine. Scholars have long thought that Zulu, Xhosa, and related languages borrowed clicks from Khoisan languages through intermarriage. The site is also not intended to be a museum, but rather a place where photos can be viewed, grouped, commented upon, analyzed, and interpreted for those interested in the photographs. In the Zulu and Xhosa cultures (less so in some areas now), certain people are not supposed to say the names of certain other people, or even say things that sound like their names. Every single click in Miriam Makeba's "click song," which is in Xhosa, is a sound that was borrowed from a neighboring language and swapped into existing words — and not all that long ago, either. Tsk! I’m not from Africa or Australia, but I’ve heard my fair share of clicks growing up – only when my mother wasn’t very pleased with me! More Filters. ISIXHOSA NAMES Names for people in isiXhosa (Xhosa) with their meanings. A few theories have been propounded. It is the official language of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Asanda, both, still increasing. Find the complete details of Xhosa name on BabyNamesCube, the most trusted source for baby name meaning, numerology, origins, similar names and more! So why do these languages have clicks when most others don't? This name generator will give you 10 random Xhosa names. If any of the numbers are links, you can hear a recording by clicking on them. Unlike Xhosa, the clicks and words in Zulu are differentiated only by tone, not by spelling. Means "king; lord; ruler; god" in Xhosa. Zulu, Xhosa, and other languages related to them have had clicks only for a few hundred years. This is especially true of the Eastern Cape , where the language is spoken extensively and taught in the schools. Fundiswa – smart, sensible, educated; Noxolo – peace; Funeka – needed; Khanyiswa – lights up; Nobomi – life; Gugu – our pride; Sindiswa – we have it; Nonhle - beautiful; Nocawe – born on Sunday; Sisipho – gift The Khoisan wives knew just what to use: clicks. It includes three types of clicks – denoted by the letters C, X and Q. Xhosa is pronounced: ‘osa’. The Xhosa language is known as isiXhosa in its native language. Xhosa is spoken as a first language by approximately 8.2 million people and by another 11 million as a second language in South Africa, mostly in Eastern Cape Province, Western Cape, Gauteng and Northern Cape. Find out more about the name Xhosa at BabyNames.com. The credit for introducing clicks to a worldwide audience goes to singer Miriam Makeba, whose life has been celebrated on Google’s Doodles this year. So, why the Khoisan languages? What if we replaced the c in coffee with a click? I notice that the Wikipedia for Xhosa lists 18 clicks (instead of just the 3 demonstrated in the first two links): [kǀʼ] c [kǀʰ] ch [ɡ̊ǀʱ] gc [ŋǀ] nc [ŋǀʱ] ngc [ŋǀˀ] nkc [kǁʼ] x [kǁʰ] xh [ɡ̊ǁʱ] gx [ŋǁ] nx [ŋǁʱ] ngx [ŋǁˀ] nkx [kǃʼ] q [kǃʰ] qh [ɡ̊ǃʱ] gq [ŋǃ] nq [ŋǃʱ] ngq [ŋǃˀ] nkq Xhosa names are used by the Xhosa people of South Africa. And any given thing that can be used in speech will likely be used somewhere by someone. The Khoisan languages have had clicks in them from time immemorial, and their speakers have always been in the southern part of Africa. It sounds like a branch snapping. Photos, videos, and other materials. The last name Xhosa is most commonly occurring in South Africa, where it is held by 365 people, or 1 in 148,432. One scholar, Alec Knight, proposed about 10 years ago that clicks were useful for the Khoisan cultures in particular because they are (or were) hunter-gatherer cultures, and the click sounds are just like forest sounds, so they wouldn't startle animals if they used them when they were hunting. Now, this might seem like it would result in a different set of click words for each person. especially the clicks, which originated from the Khoisan (this refers to groups formerly known as the Hottentots and the Bushmen). They're sounds that English speakers make — but not as part of words. Aphiwe, both, they are given. You probably know what click sounds are. So what would you say? Use the form below to create Unicode IPA characters that you can enter into your browser's search field. Since the letter K can be subsituted for c, q, and x (click = klik, quick = kwick, axe = aks) these letters are used to represent the clicks in written Xhosa. Anathi, both, they are with us. Around 1990, a linguist named Robert Herbert actually looked at the societies in question closely enough to spot a much more likely — and much more interesting — cause: a thing called hlonipha. Usage: Language: Place + Letters. These famous click sounds are found in Khoisan languages (alternative names include Khoesaan or Khoesan). But two factors helped anchor the clicks. But the original idea they had was that Bantu warriors had taken brides from Khoisan peoples, possibly by force, and that the warriors were away from home so much that the children picked up clicks from their mothers and used them in the language of their fathers. Aviwe, both, been heard. (In Khoisan languages, it's 40 to 60 percent.). By Sumitra on December 4th, 2013 Category: Entrepreneur Builds 600-Square-Meter Floating Sea Mansion, YouTuber's False Review Forces South Korean Restaurant to Shut Down, The World's Oldest Coal Fire Has Been Burning For 6,000 Years, This 25-Year-Old Puddle Has Its Own Instagram Account, This Family Has Been Creating Beautiful Ice Trees Every Christmas, for Over 60 Years, Say What? Find it confusing? The Xhosa are the second largest cultural group in South Africa, after the Zulu-speaking nation. Other Bantu languages like Sotho and Zulu use clicks. It's not usual for a language to borrow a sound and swap it into the middle of words it already has. That's right. But that sound came over as part of borrowed words. To know more about the culture, and Xhosa baby names read the article below. Clan names are also of great importance in the Xhosa culture. Numbers in Xhosa (isiXhosa) Information about counting in Xhosa, a Bantu language spoken in South Africa and Lesotho. e9 = new Object(); A woman wouldn't say the name of her father-in-law, for instance. Well, there are video tutorials online that you can follow to get the hang of it. One culture that has an abundance of beautiful and meaningful names is the Xhosa culture. The name Khoisan is a compound word formed with the native words khoi “person” and san “forager”, meaning ‘persons who forage in the bush” or “bushmen”. N|uu, for instance, has only 10 remaining speakers. In the Lardil and Yangkaal Aboriginal peoples living in islands off Australia, some men would undergo initiation ceremonies to speak a language called Damin. e9.snackbar = true; May 6, 2018 - Xhosa (isiXhosa) is a Bantu language spoken by around 15 million people in southern Africa. Secondly, though, when children grow up with parents who speak two languages, they don't randomly blenderize the languages. Xhosa names are uncommon as baby girl names. Mhlaba (earth), Mfazwe (war), etc. When I was selecting names for my children I wanted to see names that weren't just the standard. Means "mother of enlightenment" in Xhosa. Finally, they made an ultrasonic apparatus to measure the accurate positions of the tongue.