Khoekhoe
ethnic group
Khoikhoi or Khoekhoe (/ˈkɔɪkɔɪ/ KOY-koy) are the traditionally nomadic pastoralist indigenous population of Southern Africa. They are often grouped with the hunter-gatherer San (literally "foragers") peoples, the accepted term for the two people being Khoisan. The designation "Khoikhoi" 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 Inqua, Griqua, Gonaqua, Nama, Damaqua Attequa. The Khoekhoe were once known as Hottentots, a term now considered offensive.
The Khoekhoe are thought to have diverged from other humans 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. In the 17th century, the Khoekhoe maintained large herds of Nguni cattle in the Cape region. They mostly gave up nomadic pastoralism in the 19th to 20th century.
The 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.
The Xirikua clans (Griqua) developed their own ethnic identity in the 19th century and settled in Griqualand West.
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This entry incorporates text from “Khoekhoe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.