Khoisan

Meanings

Proper Noun

• The group of non-Bantu Southern African indigenous people.
• The group of languages associated with the Khoisan including the Khoi, Kx'a and Tuu families, sometimes to the inclusion of the Hadza and Sandawe language isolates of Tanzania.

Noun

• A member of the Khoi or San people.

Origin

• Khoi + San, from the pastoral Khoi tribe (formerly also called Hottentots) and the hunter-gatherer San (also known as Bushmen).
• Coined by Isaac Schapera in 1930, in linguistic usage since the 1950s (following Joseph Greenberg, Studies in African Linguistic Classification, 1955).