Beard Shaver’s Bush. Place Names in the Cape, by Peter Slingsby and Ed Coombe

Beard Shaver’s Bush. Place Names in the Cape, by Peter Slingsby and Ed Coombe. ISBN 062024965X / ISBN 0-620-24965-X

Beard Shaver’s Bush: Place Names in the Cape by Ed Coombe and Peter Slingsby lists the origins, meanings and pronunciation of nearly 2000 Western Cape place names.

Peter Slingsby  

Beard Shaver’s Bush is a hilarious, informative and hugely entertaining guide to Place Names in the Cape Beard Shaver’s Bush: Place Names in the Cape. Welcome to the Fairest Cape in all the Circumference of the Earth. To many South Africans this small paradise-on-earth is simply the Cape, die Kaap or iKoloni... but to our many visitors it can be a confusing place where a multiplicity of peoples have left their languages in its place names and features. The idea for this book grew from a suggestion by John Beazley of Uttoxeter, UK, who visited the Cape in 1999, that there was a need for a glossary to help visitors pronounce and understand Cape place names. We soon realised that there was little collected information about these names. We found that no book about Cape place names had been published since 1926 - so, for visitors, we hope that this book will help you to understand and even pronounce our place names, and so to feel more at home in this "Tavern of the Seas". To our fellow residents, we hope that this may become a valuable resource for anyone fascinated by the romance of place names, for officialdom, and for the tourist industry. Here are many names of great beauty, of mystery, of hope, of tragedy, reflecting the history and aspirations of half a millennium of written history. Ours is one of the most-named Capes in the world ... a 1306 map shows the correct shape of Africa, with our Cape marked as Cabo di Diab [Devil's Cape]. In his chart of 1457 Fra Mauro also notes that name. Then in 1488 Bartholomew Diaz, the first Portuguese explorer to round the Cape, called it Cabo de Boa Esperanza, the Cape of Good Hope. Some called it Cabo Tormentosa [the Cape of Storms], but the Cape of Good Hope persisted, and the Dutch translated that to Kaap de Goede Hoop [in Afrikaans: Kaap de Goeie Hoop]. But most of us just call it the Cape. There are literally thousands more names in the Cape than are gathered here. We would need several books to accommodate the countless street names, farm names, and names of small streams, hills, bays and anglers' rocks in this province. If we have left out any really important place, please let us know. Gathering names and finding their origins is a hazardous undertaking, not least for the danger of offending local inhabitants who know better than we do! So, please don't hesitate to contact us at one of the addresses below if you have any suggestions for additions and corrections where our research may have failed us. [...]

This is an excerpt from the guide: Beard Shaver’s Bush. Place Names in the Cape, by Peter Slingsby and Ed Coombe.

Book title: Beard Shaver’s Bush. Place Names in the Cape
Authors: Peter Slingsby; Ed Coombe
Publisher: Baardskeerder cc
ISBN 062024965X / ISBN 0-620-24965-X
Cape Town, South Africa 2000
Softcover, 15x21 cm, 138 pages, bw-sketches