History of place names in Southern Africa

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Dorsland

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I have always had an avid interest in history, especially that of our country and volk the Afrikaners.  (Let's not get into an argument of Afrikaners vs Boere  :)) The destruction of South Africa and the erasure of everything related to my history, culture, language, the renaming of anything from the old South Africa and so on is particularly painful to me.

Anyway......

As a result of my interest, I have an extensive library of natural history, geographical, cultural, historical and other books.  Among them a book by PE Raper, head of the Onomastic Research Centre of the HSRC, titled Dictionary of Southern African Place Names.  I always used to take this book along on my African travels when I was younger and enjoyed doing some layman's research to be able to extend my personal knowledge of the many places I encountered back then.

I thought it would be interesting to share some of these brief histories and any other interesting details here.  If anyone has additional information and perhaps photos, it would make an interesting read for us.

I'd like to keep this thread as a historical perspective so new "liberated" names will not be used.

 
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