The ǀXam
The ǀXam are the people for whom the extinct ǀXam language is named, spoken in the Karoo and along the Orange River. Wikipedia’s article on the language places it in the ǃUi branch of the Tuu family, closely related to the moribund Nǁng and Tumʔi languages, and says its last known speakers died in the 1910s. (That date rests on a 1995 source by Traill; the article also says some ǀXam words may survive in Tumʔi.) The opening click is written ǀ, and the name is also spelled ǀKham. This page uses “Xam” so it can be found in a plain search.
Where they lived
The article says Bleek and Lloyd recorded dialects of clans in the Strandberg area, whose name it translates roughly as “Plain people”, and in the Katkop mountains, home of the “Grass People”, both in the Karoo. It lists recorded varieties from the lower and middle Orange River, the Achterveld, the Strandberg-Katkop Karoo, and Colesberg, Burghersdorp and Aliwal North, and says a wider ǀXam group may extend into Lesotho.
The Bleek and Lloyd Collection
The German linguist Wilhelm Bleek, based in Cape Town, first studied an Achterveld variety, and he and Lucy Lloyd then spent decades recording speakers including ǁKabbo, Diaǃkwāin, ǀAǃkúṅta, ǃKweiten-ta-ǁken and ǀHaṅǂkassʼō. Their stories and vocabulary form the surviving corpus; some were published in 1911 as Specimens of Bushman Folklore. The article notes that Bleek recorded distinctive speech for animal characters in the stories, for example Tortoise and Mongoose, and that the motto on South Africa’s coat of arms, adopted on 27 April 2000, is given in a reconstructed ǀXam phrase meaning something like unity in diversity; it is not known whether the phrase was idiomatic in ǀXam.
What we have not read
The article is thinly sourced in places, citing an unpublished conference talk and a handout, and it carries a missing-citation tag. We have not read the Bleek and Lloyd archive itself, and we have found no account by a living descendant. The terms used for the people in the old records are not the ones their descendants would use, and we have not tried to reproduce them.
Izithakazelo and totem
The sources we read record stories, not clan praises or totems, so we are printing none. If you are a descendant and want family history recorded here, with your permission and credited to you, we would like to hear from you.
Sources and further reading
- Wikipedia: ǀXam language (cites Güldemann 2019, Traill 1995, Bleek and Lloyd)
Are you a descendant of the ǀXam? Tell us your family’s history and we will add it, credited to you. Share what you know or WhatsApp 065 138 8213.