Place Names As An Historical Source

Place Names as an Historical Source: An Introduction with Examples from
Southern Senegambia and Germany
Stephan Bühnen
History in Africa, Vol. 19. (1992), pp. 45-101.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0361-5413%281992%2919%3C45%3APNAAHS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q
History in Africa is currently published by African Studies Association.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained
prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in
the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/journals/afsta.html.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For
more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
http://www.jstor.org
Mon Apr 23 11:12:49 2007
PLACE NAMES AS AN HISTORICAL SOURCE: AN
INTRODUCTION WITH EXAMPLES FROM
SOUTHERN SENEGAMBIA AND GERMANY*
Stephan Biihnen
Bremen, Germany
Written sources for the history of sub-Saharan Africa (with the

exception of East Africa) only begin to appear with the inception of Arabic
records from the ninth century onwards, and these are restricted to the Sahel
and the northern part of the savanna belt. European sources begin in the
mid-fifteenth century, first for Senegambia. They, in turn, confine them-
selves to the coast and its immediate hinterland, as well as the navigable
courses of rivers, with few, and often vague, references to the interior. For
the time before the early written sources and for those extensive areas which
only much later entered the horizon of writing witnesses, other sources il-
luminating the past have to be traced and tapped. Among such non-written
sources are the findings of anthropology and archeology, of research in oral
tradition and place names. Because of their interdependence, working with
different source types contributes to the reliability of results.
So far little systematic use has been made of place names as a source
for African history.' Houis' 1958 dictum, "la toponymie ouest-africaine
n'est pas encore sortie de l'oeuf," has not yet been proven o b s ~ l e t eIn
. ~this
paper I hope to stimulate the process of shedding the egg shells. It is in-
tended as a short introduction to the potential historical treasures place
names may yield, into their characteristics, and into some principles guiding
their interpretation. With the aim at illustrating my arguments, I add exam-
ples of place names. These I have chosen from two areas which, at first
sight, seem to have been selected rather randomly; southern Senegambia and
Germany. In fact both areas share few features, both geographically and his-
torically. Two reasons have led me to select them. First, they simply are the
regions I know best. Secondly, the recourse to German place names is in-
structive, as research on place names has been undertaken there for more
than a century, leading to a wide range of data and to the accumulation of
rich research experience.
This procedure, the juxtaposition of place names from two so very dif-
ferent parts of the world, leads to significant results. The formation of place
names in the two regions follows the same principles, their interpretation
creates similar problems, and place names can, finally, play an important
role in the reconstruction of African history and prehistory as they do for
European prehistory and early history. All this allows for the extensive,
though not uncritical, adoption by Africanists of the theoretical assumptions
Hislory in Africa 19 (1992): 45-101

46 STEPHAN BUHNEN
of place name research in Europe. Thus, African toponymic research does

not need to start from theoretical scratch.
I firmly believe in the virtues of the comparative method. Keeping an
eye on new developments in the prehistory and early history of coastal
northwest Germany has widened my horizon for neglected sources and
aspects of Senegambian history, and vice-versa. In particular, the compari-
son of regions with a predominance of very different types of sources (such
as written sources and archeology in Europe and oral tradition and anthro-
pology in Africa) yields important insights. The respective specific stress on
certain source types is certain to diminish, for example, with the progress of
archeology in Africa. But differences will continue to bear on historiogra-
phy. The European wealth of early written sources will remain unmatched
by Africa, the African wealth of anthropological insights of historical
significance to be won from the 'field' to the present day shall remain un-
matched by that for Europe's prehistory and early history. Each source type
uncovering specific knowledge of the past, Africa and Europe will continue
to contribute complementary aspects to historiography. Comparing the find-
ings of one region with those of the other will lead to ever new conclusions,
questions, and approaches.
To this day African historiography has been impeded not only by theo-
retical defects such as the tenaciously surviving migrationism, but also by
the late start of research and the very restricted number of researcher^.^ For
this latter reason wide areas of Africa still remain in historical darkness.
This is especially true of archeological research, which, because of the high
input of human energy and financial resources required, has been able to
supply only very limited insights. In whole countries (e.g., Guinea-
Conakry) there has not been any archeological work of more than a very nar-
row scale. Even in archeologically more intensively covered areas such as
northern Senegal, Mali, or Nigeria wide lacunae between archeological sites
dominate the picture. Extensive ceramic seriations, to obtain a close-meshed
chronology, are practically absent. A detailed knowledge of spatial distribu-
tions of cultural phenomena, a major aim of archeological research, remains
no more than a hope for the distant future.
Compared with archeology, the uncovering of spatial distributions of
place names requires little effort; no digging in the literal sense is involved.
All that is needed are maps, place name inventories (if available), and travel-
ing. Thus wide areas can be exploited by an individual researcher, if supplied
with the necessary methodological tools.
Southern Senegambia in History
The western half of West Africa may once have formed an area of fairly
intensive cultural exchange. One of many vestiges of supraregional links are
the words for "territorial chief' and for "slave" in languages spoken in the
48 STEPHAN BUHNEN
savanna zone from the Niger bend (Songhai) and Burkina Faso (Mossi) to
the western shores of West Africa. These words have a common root
lamlnam and jon(k) respectively. Roughly the same area, but including the
forest zone, shares a word for rice (mano/malolmarolmure/mli/etc.). I dare
not speculate about the circumstances of this cultural e ~ c h a n g e . ~
In historical times several regions of distinct social, political, and cul-
tural traits can be discerned. One of these is southern Senegambia, which
shares (inter alia) mask names found from Wuli, the Konyagi, and the lower
Gambia in the north to the Bijagos and to the Nalu and Baga-For6 in the
south: Kumpo, Kose, Mama-Jambo, Kankurang. It was a neighbor to
northern Senegambia (Takrur, Jolof, Serer), the sahelian empire of Ghana to
the northeast, and the savanna empires of Mali to the east and Susu/Jalo to
the southeast. To the south, between the coast and Futa-Jalon, a region
("Sapi"?) was inhabited by the linguistically closely-related Temne, Baga,
and Landuma/Kokoli/Tyapi and later the unrelated Susu and 'Mane'. "Sapi"
and our region share certain features, both socially (e.g. states, no 'castes')
and culturally (Bisa, Bombolong; see note 24).
Map 2 displays some of the regions. The 'ethnic core areas' of the em-
pires of Ghana, Susu, and Mali are those where the earliest massive ethnic
settlement areas are to be expected, according to various sources and my own
speculative assumptions. The map is not intended to be precise and chrono-
logically correct, but rather to give a general idea of the interregional
situation around the turn of the first to the second millennium.
Southern Senegambia is a term not current as a region's name. The area
extending from the north bank of the river Gambia to the Rio Corubal
shares certain historical traits (reflected, e.g., in a set of distinct clan names)
and it is only for lack of a better and generally accepted name that I reluc-
tantly use "Southern Senegambia." In this I follow Bertrand-BocandC, who
called the area "Guink portugaise ou SCnCgambie meridi~nale."~ I would ex-
tend this area to include the historical Beafada lands on both shores of the
Rio Grande de Buba. This enlarged southern Senegambia corresponds to the
central part of what the Portuguese of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies called the "Rivers of the Guinea of Cabo Verde" (Senegal river to
Sierra Leone), but it extends inland to include the historical stale of Kabu.
Thus it covers modern Gambia, the Casamance region of Senegal, and most
of Guinea-Bissau. A sensible alternative term to "Southern Senegambia"
would be "Central Upper Guinea."
The region is situated on both sides of an ecological border between a
semi-arid northeast and a semi-humid southwest. The coastal areas south of
river Casamance are covered by dense Guinean-type forests, the vast rest of
the region being covered by extensive dry forests of varying density and
composition. Mangroves grow along the coast and on the lower courses of
the rivers, and groves of oil palms in the humid areas. Man settled on the
dry fringes of low-lying terrain, where areas for the cultivation of wet rice,
rich colluvial soils, and drinking water were available.
PLACE NAMES AS AN HISTORICAL SOURCE 49
'Ethnic Core rea as' of the Empires
Ghana (Soninke), Susu (SusuIJalonke), and Mali
(ManinkalBambara)
vertical hachure: presumed former area of Bainunk and Kasanga

arrows: directions of ethnic expansion
Before the expansion of Mandinka influence and ethnic identity into

Kabu and along the river Gambia, the area was inhabited by the progenitors
of the Bainunk and Kasanga, the Beafada and Pajadinka, and the mangrove
rice farming Diola, ManjakPapel, and Balanta. At least since the fifteenth
century, groups of Fula herdsmen roamed through the more arid parts of the
region with their livestock, some of them in seasonal transhumance, others
as semi-nomads residing in places for several years. Fulas lived in the teni-
tories of non-Fula farmers. The relationship between husbandmen and
herdsmen was one of symbiosis plus conflict. The precarious situation of
the Fula as an eternal stranger was stabilized by an informal 'joking rela-
tionship' with the 'guardian' ethnic groups. The Fulas were the junior
partners in such alliances with the Bainunk, Kasanga, Serer, Balanta, the
Mandinka of many areas, and possibly the Beafada. The same institution
50 STEPHAN BUHNEN
served to regulate the relations between the 'stranger' Serer fishermen during
their dry-season fishing expeditions and the 'guardian' Diola population
south of the Gambia estuary.
Bainunk and Kasanga as well as the Beafada were farmers of the staple
crops millet, sorghum, and, in places, dry rice, supplemented by wet rice
cultivation (usually by women) in natural depressions (river banks and
drainage gullies). They also cultivated some fonio, tubers, etc., as well as
the commercially important cotton and indigo. The rearing of livestock sup-
plemented the agrarian production and cattle played an important role in
ritual and economy, although it did not exact the supreme social and ritual
appreciation as encountered among the mangrove rice farmers and the
Bijago. Bainunk and Kasanga are organized in patrilineages, the Beafada in
mat&(?) clans (?). Unlike Diola, Balanta, and Nalu, these ethnic groups
were, according to our sources from around 1500 and the late sixteenth cen-
tury, intensively engaged in commercial production (particularly cloth, some
salt, etc.). In some areas market places of considerable size served the-
predominantly petty-mde canied out by the producers.
There were no professional traders other than the julas, Afro-
Portuguese, and Portuguese, none of them indigenous. Only in the case of
the Felane-Niumi-Niani salt trade (300 km) did a king (of Niumi) play a ma-
jor commercial role beyond that of supplier and customer: as owner of the
means of transport (boats). In the region this is the only known case of
early African non-local waterborne transport. The area of settlement of
Bainunk, Kasanga, and Beafada was criss-crossed by networks of Muslim
long-distance traders of MandinkdSarankole background (jula). Whether
non-Muslim Susu-julas had once traded in the region remains to be investi-
gated
Social differentiation had not led to endogamous 'castes' as in the west-
ern Sudan (smiths, leather workers, bards). In fact, leather production was
not a specialized mirier, nor were there professional bards. Slaves seem to
have existed, although probably not as a group segregated from the rest of
society by a hereditary status of kinlessness, but rather became integrated
into the owner's household and, subsequently, lineage (except for the crown
slaves).
During the sixteenth century the Beafada and ManjWapel/Mankanya
were the major contributors to the Atlantic slave trade, both as suppliers and
as victims. Bainunk also figured high in the list of slave-exporting ethnic
groups. This was the result of a particularly intensive judicial enslavement
(witchcraft cases) to the advantage of the powerful, who entered the slaves
into the Atlantic trade. The major social line of demarcation was that be-
tween the commoner lineages and the royal lineage(s), with tendencies to-
wards an autocratic rule of the king over the whole society, including his
own lineage (whose members were not exempt from being enslaved by
him).
Bainunk, Kasanga, and Beafada lived in lineage territories of varying
size, under the rule of sacral kings, some subduing others to form suzerain
PLACE NAMES AS M HISTORICAL SOURCE 51
kingdoms with a hierarchy of kings. I do not subscribe to the widespread

view that the institution of 'state' was introduced from outside (Mali) and
supplanted earlier 'lineage societies.' In fact, 'states' were based on lineages:
in the case of the Bainunk and Kasanga kingship was in the hands of one or
~ -
more royal lineage(s).

Although the decision about war or peace was in the hands of the coun-
cil of elders and the armed formations were never led by the king (a taboo),
the latter had attained a near-autocratic rule, based on his defacro command
over the armed men. I suspect that the group of warriors responsible to the
lung had developed out of the anti-witchcraft (law) enforcement association
of the 'bachelor' age group (probably initiated in some states and not initi-
ated in others). These had originally been spiritually guided by the elders'
age group and had served a fairly egalitarian community. With the gradual
evolution of the king from his role as sacral figurehead of the community to
a more-or-less autocratic ruler (at least in some states), this formation had
become a tool of the kingly office and was supplemented by crown slave
soldiers. Autocratic rule and crown slaves are attested for the Kasanga of the
third quarter of the sixteenth century, but may be much older. With the ac-
celerated 'ethnic regression' of the Bainunk, Kasanga, and Beafada beginning
in the seventeenth century, a process of social leveling set in: social distinc-
tions lessened, and kingdoms crumbled and finally, in the nineteenth
century, faded away.
The early empires of Ghana and Susu and their 'ethnic cores'
(~oninkel~arankoleand Susu/Jalonke) almost certainly had had an influence
on southern Senegambia, but as yet this remains uncovered. Probably with
the rise of the Mali empire in the thirteenth century, the Mandinka ethnic
identity expanded into the area. Mali's political and military pressure, repre-
sented in the area by its military (and administrative?) personnel, was the
dnving force behind this expansion. But I assume an additional crucial role
of the julas in the cultural change process along the river Gambia. The trade
route connecting Mande via GadiagaDambuk with the very important
salines north of the Gambia estuary (at Felane) was frequented by julas,
some of whom settled along the trunk route parallel to the Gambia, espe-
cially in Niani and southeast Saloum. The julas were bearers of an esteemed
ethnic identity, that of the ethnic core of the Mali empire, which expressed
suzerainty over most of the region for two or three centuries. As cultural
representatives of Mali, the julas became peaceful agents of ethnic change,
spreading the Mandinka identity (though not their Islamic faith) among the
peasants of their new homes. For Kabu, where julas were probably not as
concentrated as they were on the Gambia, I suspect that the leading role as
agents of ethnic change was played by Mali soldiers posted there andperhaps
by independent, adventure-seeking groups of warriors.
The former Bainunk and BeafadafPajadinka inhabitants on the banks
of the Gambia and in Kabu eventually became thoroughly Mandinkized. The
survival of the indigenous (southern Senegambian) clan-names among the
majority of today's Gambia and Kabu Mandinkas betrays their
atochthonous, non-Mande origin. This process of culture change continued
to work in Pakao and Suna, where the former Bainunk had become
Mandinkas only in historical time, and it continues to the present in many
areas.
The rice farmers in the mangroves of the coast and on the lower river
courses remained largely unaffected by these developments. They included
the Diola, Balanta, ManjWapel, Nalu, and Baga. These ethnic groups had
either not developed the office of sacral kingship (Balanta), or their 'kings'
wielded, on the whole, very limited temporal powers (Diola). The uncentral-
ized character of these societies may be a result of the land tenure system in
mangrove paddy areas, marked by a high value of fields (intensive and long-
term effort for initial reclamation) and durability of individual ownership
rights (continuously cultivated fields, as compared to lineage ownership in
shifting cultivation societies). Linguistic considerations suggest a very early
adoption of rice cultivation in fields reclaimed from mangroves. The rice
farmers speak Bak languages (Diola, ManjakPapel, Balanta) and
Sua/Mansoanca/Cunante between the rivers Casamance and Rio Geba and
Nalumorth-Baga between Rio Tombali and the Nunez. The distinctiveness,
within the West Atlantic language group, of languages spoken only by
mangrove rice farmers must have taken a very long period to develop. It
thus cannot but result from a very early and lasting seclusion based not on
their (only partly) isolated habitat, but on their particular agricultural tech-
nology and its specific social, political, and cultural effects. It was these
socioeconomic features which resulted in distinct ethnic identities and lan-
guages. These must have distinguished them from their linguistically only
distantly related upland farming neighbors since very remote times.
Only the Manjak/Papel/Mankanya lived in comparatively centralized
societies with kings displaying coercive temporal power. Before the six-
teenth century, for as yet not very well understood reasons, the Balanta and
Diola began to expand (both through conquest and peaceful ethnic change)
from their original settlement areas, to the detriment of the Bainunk and
Kasanga. The expansion of Mandinka and of Diola and Balanta into the areas
of Bainunk and Kasanga led to the presently small number of Bainunk and
Kasanga speakers, numbering only several thousands and several hundreds
respectively.
Languages in the Areas Concerned

Names are elements of language. The tools of scientific work with lan-
guage items are those of linguistics. I dare trespass and, with more than just
a tinge of trepidation, venture into a field in which I have attained only a
very superficial knowledge. Moreover, I admit an equally restricted knowl-
edge of the languages spoken in southern Senegambia. If nothing else
I I I 1
North, Central, and South Branch of West Africa Group of Languages

54 STEPHAN BUHNEN
though, this might provoke more competent scholars to criticize my

methods and conclusions, and thus contribute to place-name research.
Language changes, languages are r e p l a ~ e d In. ~ that part of Central
Europe now inhabited by speakers of German, many different languages
have been spoken over the past millennia. There is no evidence for any pre-
Indo-European languages once spoken in central Europe. The oldest lan-
guage stratum discernible is one of Indo-European hydronyms, termed "Old
European." It later differentiated into, among others, Celtic (in the south)
and Germanic languages (in the north), and possibly a third, as yet unidenti-
fied, language between the two (in northeastern France, the Low Countries,
and northwestern germ an^).^ With the expansion of the Roman empire
Latin spread into the west and south around the turn of eras. From the north
the gradually emerging individual Germanic languages (Saxon, Franconian,
etc.) expanded all across Central Europe, first into the hinterland of the
south shore of the Baltic Sea and into north Germany and the Low
Countries, later into south Germany, Bohemia, and the Alps, then, with the
Volkem)anderung,to northern Italy, England, into France, and far beyond.
With the emptying of the eastern part of this area in the course of the
Volkem)anderung,Slavic languages spread west to a line roughly following
the borders between former East and West Germany and that between
Czechoslovakia and Bavaria. This latter development was reversed with the
settlement of large numbers of Germans during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries in what became the eastern part of the Germar~empire (and further
east and southeast).
All these languages, with the exception of pre-Indo-European and "Old
European" (only in hydronyms), left traces in the form of place names:
Kempten is Celtic c a m b o s "bent, curved" plus d u n u m "castle;"
Koln/Cologne is Latin Colonia Agrippinensis (colony named after
Agrippina); Asberg near Moers probably is Tacitus' Germanic Asciburgum;
Leipzig is Slavic Lipsko "place of the linden tree" (Slavic lipu "linden").
In southern Senegambia languages of two branches within the Niger-
Congo family of languages are spoken: West Atlantic languages and the
Mande language Man&nka.8 Map 4 depicts a presumed early distribution of
languages. It is based on a number of implicit assumptions, often highly
speculative and not detailed here. The evolving picture is a very static one. It
does not account for the numerous, often interdependent changes: yet it
gives a rough idea of the spatial setting that helps to understand some pro-
cesses.
West Atlantic languages extend from the north shore of river Senegal to
northern Liberia. They consist of three, fairly distantly-related branches, the
central one made up of Bijago only. The southernmost languages of the
northern branch are TendaIKonyagi, Beafada, and Nalumorth-Baga. Many
West Atlantic areas are linguistically fragmented. In particular, the lan-
guages of the agriculturally highly specialized and politically decentralized
wet-rice farmers in the mangroves along the coast and the lower reaches of
the rivers cover particularly small areas: Bak languages (Diola,
Manjak/Papel/Mankanya, Balanta), Nalumorth-Baga, (South-)Baga, Bulom.

In southern Senegambia Bainunk and Beafadeajadinka were the spatially
most important languages, if we neglect the infertile and sparsely populated
area of the politically fragmented speakers of Tenda languages in the east
(Tenda, Basari, Konyagi).
West Atlantic languages are "class languages," i.e. they classify the
nouns by prefixes (fairly recently changed to suffixes in Fula and Wolof).
The number of prefix classes is different from language to language.
Bainunk and Kasanga have more than twenty and thuty respectively, Beafada
around twenty. For example: in Bainunk trees are prefixed with kiisi-
(singular) and mu- (plural), persons are prefixed with u- (singular) and ba-
( p l ~ r a l )Thus:
. ~ kibokimubok "baobab(s)," kide:nlmude:n "silk-cotton-
/kapok-tree(s)," udikam "woman," udige:n "man," and bariu:n means
-
'.nu:nilu:n-people" (="Bainunk," this latter form being derived from the
Mandinka form bainunka ibariun-nka).
Some prefixes have a locative value, particularly the very common ka-
in practically all West Atlantic languages, but also a- and main several
languages including Bainunk, Kasanga, Beafada. The ka- prefix might be
expected to form many place names, and it does. The system of classifica-
tion and place name forming is demonstrated by the following Bainunk ex-
ample:
ulax 'blacksmith' (person who does smithing):
u - for persons (sing.), a stem -lax for the meaning
"smithing"
kalau 'forge' (place of smithing):
ka- for the place, again the stem -lax for the meaning
"smithing"
Occasionally a suffix is added to the stem. In Bainunk (and Kasanga) place
names this often is -or (and -01 respectively). It has a reciprocal and
collective value. If kadong is the "hut, provisional structure," then kadongor
would denominate a collectivity of huts.
The regularity of this word structure in West Atlantic languages, in the
form of prefix-stem (-suffix), facilitates the interpretation of place names.
Generally, the place names can easily be dismantled into prefix and stem.
The prefix normally takes the form of consonant-vowel (CV); sometimes
the consonant has been lost. If complete the stem takes the form of conso-
nant-vowel-consonant (CVC). Occasionally the seam between the final
vowel of the prefix and the initial consonant of the stem is nasalized (as in
the name of the land Kantora). In some languages, the so-called consonant
alternation (or mutation) changes the stem's initial consonant according to
grammatical context. This occurs in Kasanga and Beafada, but not in
Bainunk. Once prefix and stem are isolated, we proceed to uncover their re-
spective meanings. The current and conscious use of the general pattern in
West Atlantic languages of most nouns and verbs being structured in an
identical way, prefix plus stem (CV-CVC), seems to impede the gradual
56 STEPHAN B ~ E N
slurring of phonemes and thus to conserve the original word. The regional
name Kantora has remained unchanged for half a millennium. It was, in this
form, first mentioned in 1456.
Mandinka has only relatively recently, as compared with the au-
tochthonous West Atlantic languages, entered southern Senegambia,
probably not before the thirteenth century expansion of Mali. It belongs to
the Mande languages in general, and to their branch of
Manink@ambara/Dyula in particular. This 'chain of dialects' extends from
the middle Niger to the mouth of river Gambia and into northern Ivory
Coast. Maninka was the language of the ethnic core of the empire of Mali.
With the latter's political expansion the language entered the west, its local
variant being called Mandinka. As Mandinka is a relatively new entry into
southern Senegambia, none of its place names is very old and many have
not yet had the time to corrode beyond recognition, so they are often easily
intelligible. The widespread occurrence of composites with settlement
etyma still in use, such as kunda ("compound, extended family
habitation"),I0 du(gu) ("land"), and su ("compound"), contributes to our
comprehension of such place names. Words that are still understood are
preserved in their original shape. Examples:
Sukoto: "old compound (su plus koto "old)
Mansakunda: "king's compound (mansa "king" plus
kunda)
Sonkodu: "land of the Sonkos" (Sonko is a clan-
name, plus du "land")
This type of place name, formed by an etymon and a determinative ele-
ment, is rarely found in West Atlantic languages. The reason may be that,
with prefixed nouns and adjectives, such compositions are unwieldy. Other
Mandinka place names are formed with a locative suffix -to: Sitato "at the
baobab" (sito "baobab" plus -to).
Fula place names are, generally, recent. Only after their conquest of
Kabu in the mid-nineteenth century did they settle in permanent villages.
Previously, ephemeral settlements had led to ephemeral place names.
Today's names of Fula settlements reflect their recent colonization. They ei-
ther retained the old place name of a conquered village or formed compounds
of the etymon sa:re "settlement" plus the founder's name. For example, Sare
Mamadou. Analogous compounds are the Wolof names of the recent
(groundnut) colonization zone between the rivers Saloum and Gambia: Keur,
"compound," plus founder's name.
Languages influence one another. They exchange words: loanwords.
Many southwest German place names end in -n,eiler. German Weiler
"hamlet" is derived from Latin, villare "farmstead" (< \$ills "manor").
Loanwords have passed from one language to the next in southern
Senegambia as well. Mandinka adopted the locative prefix ka- from the West
Atlantic languages to form place names (see below).
Sound Shift
Proper names designate individual things and beings (including per-
sons), which distinguishes them from appellatives for grouped things and
beings. Toponymy is a branch of linguistics, which analyzes the meaning,
formation, and distribution of toponyms, among them place names. It is
based on the knowledge of today's languages spoken in the area under con-
sideration, and, as far as possible, the knowledge of those languages spoken
in the area in the past.
58 STEPHAN B UHNEN
Map 4
Presumed Location of West Atlantic Languages
Before the Expansion of Mandinka, SW-Mande
Languages, Susu, Fula, Balanta, Diola, etc.
What is further needed is a basic knowledge of the laws of language

change, especially of sound equivalents (homo-organic sounds) and sound
shifts. As a rule, vowels are less stable than consonants. It is the latter
which require our main attention. When forming a sound, different sound
producing anatomical elements (larynx, tongue, lips, uvula, etc.) are set in
motion. With certain sounds, the constellation of these elements is similar.
Examples: s-t, m-n, 1-11-ii,p-f, h-g-k-,xx,h-f, d-1-(rolled)r, w-6. Little changes
in the position of the lips, the tongue, etc. are needed to change from one of
these sounds to another. In some languages there is no distinction of
meaning between certain closely related sounds, they are considered identical.
This is the case in Spanish, where b and v can be interchanged at will. A
person might at times say Barcelona and at other times Varcelona. The same
rule applies to r and 1 in Diola. Under certain circumstances, a sound in a
language may change to a homo-organic sound. This is called a sound shift.
The Germanic languages developed out of common Indo-European as a
distinct group through a series of shifts, among them: b, d, g > p, t, k (cf.
Latin ped- > Gothic fot- and modern English foot). In Italian 1 behind initial
p and f shifted to i (piazza "place, square" > piazza,Jora "flower" >fiora),
in Spanish initial f became h i under certain circumstances (ferro "iron" >
hierro), in Old High German the Germanic p became f (slepan "to sleep" >
slafan) or pf (appla "apple" > apful). This early medieval "High German
sound shift," which affected other sounds as well, started from the south-
west, but never reached north Germany. Northern German, which largely re-
tained the original Germanic sounds, came to be called "Low German.""
Examples from the Maninka languageldialect cluster: The western di-
alect, Mandinka, lost the intervocalic velar: - d u g u > -du "land,"
senankulsana.~~ > sanau2 "cousin," silatigi > silati "caravan-leader, gover-
nor," sada.ua > sada "sacrifice." Examples from West Atlantic languages:
Bainunk initial d corresponds to an initial 1 in closely-related Kasanga (u-
dikam "woman" = u-likang). The original stem for "ear" in West Atlantic
languages is nuf. In Bainunk, Fula, Beafada, and Pajadinka this stem is re-
tained. But in Wolof it has changed to nop, while in Diola and Bijago the
final consonant dropped off: no. In Balanta, besides a loss of final f, the ini-
tial n shifted to I: lo. In Limba initial n was dropped: if. Because sound
shifts operate generally, they recur wherever the sound position within a
word is identical (e.g. stems for "head" and "throat" as well: final f in
Bainunk and Beafada).I2
Shifts of sound and meaning are the basic mechanisms of lexical
language differentiation. Shifts of sound alter the shape of a word. Lexical
shifts change its meaning. If a certain set of shifts of shape and meaning
reaches only part of the language area, dialects develop. With further shifts
dialects develop into languages unintelligible to speakers of the original
language.
A knowledge of sound equivalents (e.g. 1 and d) is necessary to deter-
mine whether or not two different place names are identical. The southern
Senegambian place names Buduk and Birko seem, at first glance, unrelated.
Yet, they are the same: the d in Buduk corresponds to the r in Birko. As
vowels in all languages are less stable than consonants, a correspondence of
u and i is not surprising. The vowel between r and k in Birko has been
dropped. Besides, interchanging of vowel and consonant (metathesis) is
common in the region, which is why we also find a variant Briko for Birko.
The final o in Birko also occurs in a Buduku variant of Buduk.
STEPHAN BUHNEN
The Etymology of Place Names
Place names are proper names of settlements, i.e., towns, villages, vil-
lage quarters, compounds (French concession). They belong to the
toponyms, names of punctual and two-dimensional areas of the space sur-
rounding man. Other toponyms are Flurnamen (German for names of areas
surrounding settlements, such as fields, forests, etc.), names of countries,
and hydronyms (names of rivers, lakes, etc.).
Proper names, such as place names, serve to discriminate. If there was
only one village in the world of a group, the designation "village" (German
Do@)would suffice. If there are more, they have to be distinguished in order
not to confuse them. This can be done by adding something typical, their
size (biglsmall: Grossdorf/Kleindorf), their location (upperllower:
Oberdorf~Unterdorf), or their inhabitants (Karlshafen "Karl's port,"
Thionville in Lorraine < Theodonis villa).I3
Proper names are conservative. This is because they are unique; they
designate individual things and beings. Once an appellative, such as
Oberdorf (upper village), has turned into a commonly-acceptedproper name,
comprehension of the name ceases to be necessary--everybody knows which
village is meant by Oberdorf. One might even have agreed on a nonsense
name. As only one village would cany this name, it suffices to satisfy the
need for distinction. The appellative, which was once the origin of a name,
once it is given and commonly accepted, does not need to be understood fur-
ther. And it follows that if the inhabitants of the general area of Oberdorf
had undergone language change, they would no longer understand the origi-
nal meaning of Oberdorf, but there would be no need to change the place
name. Personal names as well as place names, neither of which have to un-
dergo change in the course of language change, tend not to be understood by
their users. Slavic place names such as Berlin, Leipzig, and Chemnitz in
eastern Germany persist and continue to serve their purpose. The same ap-
plies to places along the river Gambia and in Kabu, which continue to carry
names once given as Bainunk, Beafada, etc. appellatives no longer
understood by their inhabitants, who have been Mandinka for more than half
a millennium. Because place names are conservative their shapes tend to pet-
rify, turning them into language fossils. As such, they bear witness of
language items long out of use or, in the course of time. changed beyond
recognition.
To make such fossils disclose their original meaning, we have to try
and reconstruct their shape as it may once have been when first given to the
locality. In Central Europe this is often possible through the aid of written
references from the Middle Ages or earlier. A small town near Bremen by
the name of Brinkum was mentioned as Brinchem in a document of 1158.
From this and other place names we may deduce that the suffix -um in many
north German (Old-Saxon) place names is often derived from an original
hem "home," which closely resembles the Anglo-Saxon ham (as in

Nottingham) and corresponds to heim in other German regions. The deter-
minative element Brinc is no longer understood in modem German. It means
"hill, edge of a hill, raised (dry) area within wet surrounding" and
corresponds to English brink. Thus Brinkum means "home on the edge of a
hill or on a raised area," which fits with its location on the edge of the geest
(slightly raised sandy area of glacial origin) towards the river Weser's allu-
vial marshes.
In Africa the interpretation of place names suffers from the lack or
exiguity of written records of early forms of place names and of early forms
of its languages. While many African languages are scarcely known to the
present day, we have a sound knowledge of the history of the German
language and of early forms of most place names in the Middle Ages,
because we dispose of (comparatively) ample written records.
Some southern Senegambian place names, such as Bakendik (Niumi),
Buba (south of the lower Rio Corubal), Bissau, and Faja (south bank of up-
per Rio Cacheu), begin to make sense only when we know variants from
written documents (including maps), i.e., obsolete forms: Backerenduck (ca.
1650), Buguba (ca. 1471 to 1502), Bisanao (1468-80), and BajabolBaiab
(mid-seventeenth century/1840~).'~ The old Backerenduck retains an r and
gives the final vowel i as a u. It permits the tentative reconstruction of an
original *ba-ka-ran-duk (Bainunk prefixes ba- for plural, ka- as a locative,
ra(n)- inter alia for rituals). The stem duk appears in many place names of
southern Senegambia analyzed in some detail later in this paper. In the case
of the other three place names the identification of the complete stem is im-
possible or difficult without the aid of obsolete forms. The stem of modem
Buba is gub, that of Bissau possibly either san or naw, that of Faja jablyab:
The initial b of the prefix shifted to f (ba- >fa-), correspondingly in another
northern Balanta place name: Fassada < Bassada (ex-Kasanga-village, cf.
Sonkodu-Bainunk place name Bassada). The northern Balanta ("Betcha" or
"Balanta-Mane") on both banks of the upper Rio Cacheu, once ruled by a
king of the Mane lineage at Faja, had originally been Kasanga (cf, note 93)
and those north of Rio Cacheu were still tributary to Kasa in the mid-seven-
teenth century.
The spelling of place names in written sources, including modem maps.
is subject to orthographic conventions. These depend on the language and
nation of the writer at a given time, and on tradition. To give but two ex-
amples: the sound ii is rendered as nh in modem Portuguese, as gn (inter-
vowel) and ni (initial) in modern French, and as ni or ny in modem English.
In Senegalese use (not in the modern national orthography, which is not
used on maps), the sound j is rendered as di (as in "Diola") and as gu (as in
Guidelljidel), the latter possibly for a sound oscillating between j and gj.
Allowances are also to be made for possible mistakes in spelling and in
transcription, as well as for misprints.
Place names are more than just language fossils. They betray features
that were considered typical of the locality at the time of name-giving.
STEPHAN BUHNEN
Generally speaking, place names may be divided into nature names and cul-
ture names. Nature names are those that name a place after its location
within its natural environment: relief, vicinity of a lake, river, creek,
swamp, forest, access to water, etc., and topographically conspicuous items
such as a particular tree, rock, etc. Culture names refer to the inhabitants or
to the settlement itself.
Nature names in Germany:

Paderbom: "Pader source"
Bremen: "at the edges" of the dune on river Weser (oldest form
Bremun is locatively used dative of the plural of Old-Saxon
brem = Engl. brim)
Berlin: "swamp" (slavic brl plus suffix -in).
Bainunk nature names in southern Senegambia:

Beguingue (beginge, also called bujingen) near S%oDomingos:
"hill"
It was called QuinquimlGuinguin (etc.) in the seventeenth
century.I5 -kingking/-ginging, "hill," possibly cognate of
Mandinka konko, kongo, "mountain, elevated area."
Guraf near Ziguinchor: "high-lying, elevated"
locative prefix gu-, plus stem ra.f"high, above, ..."
Joreng (twice east of Geregia), Jareng (Balmadou, Niamina,
Djibonker near Ziguinchor: seat of Sanya-kings in Edinblam-
quarrier), Jaring (marigot in Kiang, NE of Saloum-Kaur,
abandoned place near Kasa-Bnkama), Tiarkne (near Nioro-du-
Rip), Diorkne (Jimara), possibly Bureng (Jarra) and B(e)rin
(west of Ziguinchor): "low place"
prefix jaijo- (and bu-), plus stem re:n/reng "low" (>"rice-
field," "swamp") (equivalent Diola place-names
KatamaJEtarna:prefixes ka-le- plus ta:m "low")
Kalaji in the Foni-Jar01 district of The Gambia: "rock-place"
locative prefix ka- plus Bainunk stem laj, "rock," Diola
village near Jarrol, probably formerly a Bainunk Flurname
Mampalago on the Soungrougrou (West-Sonkodu): "the place
of rocks"
locative, nasalized prefix ma-, plus plural prefix ba-, plus
Bainunk stem laj, "rock" (stem's final j > g before
determinative suffix-vowel -0)
Jibok near Ziguinchor and formerly in the Gambian district of
Foni Bondali and Djibonker (jiboxer): "baobab place"
PLACE NAMES AS AN HISTORICAL SOURCE
prefix ji- plus stem bok "baobab" (plus suffix -er = -or
"collectivity")
Nyandena in Jasin: "sik-cotton/Kapok-trees"
plural prefix Aa- plus stem de:n "kapoWcotton-tree"
Kabomb in Fogni: "at the talo tree"
locative prefix ka- plus -bomb "talo/mancone tree"
(Erythrophlocum guineense)
Jireji (South Jasin), Kan-kilji-rije (Fogni-Faraba), Geregia:I6
"crocodile place," all located on riverslmarigors,
locative prefix ji-, plus 00)-re:gire:j "crocod~le"(analogous
to the frequent Mandinka place name Bambadinka,
"cmodlle den")
Places named after their inhabitants in Germany:

Tubingen: "at Tuwo's people"
personal name Tuwo plus possessive suffix -ingen (cf.
Nottingham in England)
Munchen (Munich): "at the monks"
German Monch, "monk"
Possibly some of the southern Senegambian place names with a plural

prefix ba- are named after their inhabitants (but prefix also for non-humans).
Bainunk examples:
Baraf/Borofay near Ziguinchor: "those living on high ground"
plural prefix ba- for persons plus stem raf "up, above,
high"
Kanjilai near Tobor (opposite Ziguinchor): "place of long-
distance traders"
prefix ka- plus jilai, "trader" (< Mandinka ju:la)
German and Mandinka names referring to the settlement are generally
composites of a settlement etymon and a determinative element such as lo-
cational descriptions or personal names. Thus, place names of this type are
composed of etyma like
-dorf, "village;" -hausen, "houses;" -burg, "town, castle;" or
-heim, "home" in Germany
(English cognates -thorp (-dorf) and -ham (-heim)
su- and -kunda (both: "compound") in Mandinka place names
of southern Senegambia, plus determinative elements that refer
to the size, location, or inhabitants:
Ober-, "upper;" Gross-, "great;" Fischer-, "fishermen;"
Reinharts- (name) in Germany
STEPHAN BUHNEN
sanfo,"upper;" -ba, "big;" -kofo,"old;" -kuta, "new;" Manga-

(clan name) in Mandinka
Syntactic features of West Atlantic languages impede the construction
of word compounds.17This is why compounds are very rarely found among
the place names given in West Atlantic languages. In Senegambian place
names locative connotations can be achieved without the use of an etymon.
The prefix ka- serves to denote the meaning "place." Other prefixes can serve
the same end. Aiiur is the name of an abandoned Kasanga village: Gujaher-
Bainunk and Kasanga ja-fiur, "shrine (of individual)" > a-iiur, "shrine place."
Bainunk gu-nam is "king's place." Occasionally an interchanging of
different locative prefixes occurs. The former residence of a branch of the
royal lineage of Kasa was called Conjongolon in the mid-nineteenth
century.'* Today it is known as Ayongolom (near or identical with Adun):
ka(n)- was substituted by a-.I9 The seventeenth-century Beafada village of
AnchomeneZ0is today's Mansomine (west of Bafati): prefix a ( n ) - was
substituted by m ( n ) - .
The prefixes m ( n ) - andji- originally had no locative value. What made
them gain this new, extended meaning remains to be uncovered. I assume
that these prefixes, as locatives, had or still have a connotation as yet un-
known to me. The prefix ka- is one of the few loans the Mandinka of south-
em Senegambia has made from West Atlantic languages, probably due to its
wide dstribution and easy handling.21It is to be found from Sierra Leone to
northern Senegambia (Ganar "pays de maures," prefix ga- plus nar "mure,"
and regional names such as Kayor, Gandun, and, possibly, Gadiaga).22It is
particularly common in place names of the Diola, Manjak, and Nalu, but
also in Kabu and on the coast south of the Rio Grande de Buba, and
stretches from the coast far into the hinterland south of river KonkourC (see
map 5).
As a general rule (with exceptions), the prefix is nasalized (kam-lkan-
lkang-) off the coastal areas. This may possibly be attributed to Mandinka
influence. Mandinka tends to nasalize final vowels; for example, the Diola
and Bainunk clan name Sanya corresponds to the Mandinka version
Sanyang.
Some Bainunk place names display a feature of the settlement consid-
ered significant at the time of naming:
Jinak in Niumi and near Diouloulou: "upland field," "upland
forest"
prefix ji- plus stem nak for the upland fields (and forests),
as opposed to the temporarily inundated rice paddies (cf.
the frequent Diola E-/ka-/ji-ramba: rumba "upland
forest/fieldW).Identical stem in Ebinako (southwest of
Fogni), and Binako and Sonaco (East Kasa).
Singuer in Jasin and near Kasa-Brikama: "fence, palisade"
prefix si- for trees and their products, plus ker, "fence,
palisade"
- 1a - concentration high concentration
Map 5
Place names with prefix ka-
Several Sindina in Kasa and Tandina in Fogni: "well, source"

prefixes si(n)- and ta(n)-,plus stem di:n "drinking water,
source, well" (> "rain" > "sky" > "god).
Kasan, a Mandinka town of historical importance in Niat~i:*~
"pahadedplace"
prefix ka- plus Mandinka sanfsan),"palisade, fence"
Wherever we understand the original meaning of a place name we learn
about its former location, inhabitants, or other characteristics. Of particular
interest to the historian are those names that tell us about the ritual, politi-
cal, or other function of the place at the time of naming (not necessarily
66 STEPHAN B UHNEN
identical with the moment of founding). It is only through such names that
settlements devoted to a cult of Wotan (Odin in North Germanic) in
Scandinavia, like Odense on Fiinen island, and the site of a temple in
Alsfeld (Hessen, Gothic alhs, "temple," -feld, "field), have been located. A
place name denoting a Christian institution is Miinster (cf. Engl. -minster,
from Latin monasterium, "monastery"). Southern Senegambia villages with
names like Mansakunda or Farankunda are Mandinka creations with the
etymon kunda "compound" plus mansa "king" or faran "provincial gover-
nor." AbisaIBisa is the name of an extinct Kasanga village. This is the
name of a shrine ("fetish"), at which a ritual assembly of the elders of a
village or country was celebrated under the leadership of the politico-sacral
head of the community.%Further Bisa place names occur in Papel temtory,
in the former Beafada area south of Mansoa, as Pissa (southeast of Gabu)
and, as Jabisa (with a prefix ja-), in Jarra on the Gambia. Place names
inspired by religion are also all those that spread with the dissemination of
Islam: the numerous Ma(n)dina, but also Maka (Mekka), Darsilame ("haven
of peace"), Bakadaji (Bagdad), Kerewan (from the holy Kairouan in Tunisia),
and many others. Finally, there are those place names that refer to economic
activities: among them in Germany those on a relatively recent etymon -
hafen, "port" and hiitte, "place of metal working," but also the old Hall(e)
designating salines. In Senegambia Tendaba (Kiang) was the site of a "big"
(-ba),"emporium, landing place" (Mandinka tenda). Other places and regions
named Tenda probably also mark former market areas. The site of the former
tenda of the northern Bainunk villages of Jarrol and Kamanka (between
Kiang and Sonkodu) is called sinkindi. And a Bainunk name variant of S%o
Domingos is cingindi. Both are the Bainunk equivalent of Mandinka tenda.
A second word for tenda, found in all Bainunk dialects and in Kasanga, is ba-
turn. Was Badume in Jarra thus named?
Folk or Popular Etymology
The explanation of place names has at all times fascinated man. Place
names are explained with the aim of confirming the dominant image of the
place and its inhabitants. While often very arbitrary, this type of etymology
casts light on the producers' beliefs and views concerning the place and its
inhabitants.
The name of the provincial capital of Ziguinchor is explained by a
Bainunk informant to be derived from asi:nin core, "places to go are fin-
ished," and relates to the migration route of the Bainunk tradition. A
different etymology "tiens son nom d'une expression portugaise S h e g u e i ,
Choramcc: "Je suis arrivt, ils pleurent," alluding to the shipment of slaves
from the port of Z i g u i n c h ~ r This
. ~ ~ etymology reflects the reception of his-
torical radio programs and other modern sources of knowledge. Actually, the
toponym existed before the founding of Ziguinchor by the Portuguese, ca.
1645, and thus before the first shipment of slaves from there. At the end of
the sixteenth century the Banhuns (Bainunk) de Ezigichor were mentioned.26
The original toponym may have been ji-gic-or, "place of several gic
(-fields)."27The Bainunk stem gic denotes "okra" (Mandinka-cognate kuca).
The nasalized vowel in the variant stem ginc of modem "Ziguinchor" corre-
sponds to such variation in other lexical items: A common West Atlantic
stem fankifunkifonk (from river Gambia to the Temne in the south, entered
Portuguese Creole as funco) for "compound" and elements of the same
(room, granary, e t ~ .corresponds
)~~ to unnasalized gzi-fa:c (northeastem
Bainunk "compound," Niamone-Bainunk "room") and, possibly, Wolof puk-
us, "granary." Besides, fankifiinkifonk, with and without prefixes, has been
productive as a place-namer between the lower Gambia and the Rio Geba.
Examples: Bainunk village Djifangor, "place (ji-) of several (-or)
compounds/houses (-fang-)" (near Ziguinchor), Mafonko (West Sonkodu.
west of Gabu), Fanka (ex-capital of Sankola), and Jufunco (near Bolor on
north shore of Rio Cacheu estuary).
Popular etymology occasionally scoops from oral tradition. Thus, it
may itself become an historiographical source. The place names of Banger
and Sandinier in historical Suna are, in popular etymology, derived from the
names of two quarrelling brothers in Banger: Sundi Nyeer and Buba Nyeer.
As a result of their quarrel the former left to found Sandinier. From written
evidence, both villages are known to have been the domiciles of Suna's
royal lineage. The etymology corroborates this information and hints at
Banger, the "original village of the brothers," as the senior branch of the rul-
ing Sanyang lineage at a given moment.
VII
Spatial Distribution of Place Names
Place names, as all proper names and language phenomena, are tied to
persons-speakers. Persons again form different types of communities,
which are unevenly distributed in space. By uncovering the distribution of
certain recurring place names we may hope to uncover the areas of those
communities which left traces of their place names. The spatial pattern of
cultural phenomena (social, political, religious, artistic, etc.) is the result of
historical processes. Its interpretation may present us with clues to those
processes.
Membership in human communities is accorded by specific criteria,
which may be relatively stable or volatile. Such communities may be based
on common social institutions such as kin groups or political units such as
states. Such groups are, in general, well defined, and members are quite
unambiguous in assigning themselves to one such group.
Membership within an ethnic group is less unequivocal. The most cur-
rent criterion is language affiliation. A German is someone whose mother
tongue is German. On the other hand Austrians and the majority of Swiss
STEPHAN BUHNEN
also speak German, but would surely not wish to be considered Germans.
On the other hand descendants of German immigrants in Eastern Europe and
Central Asia, many of whom do not speak German, regard themselves, and
are regarded by their surrounding, as being Germans. Both cases make clear
that ethnic identity is bound to historical development. An ethnic group is
generally seen to incorporate a common language, temtory, and culture.
These objective criteria are supplemented by the subjective criterion of self
and outside assignment. Compared to the objective criteria, this affiliation
can be fairly unstable. Under certain conditions it may even superimpose it-
self on the objective criteria and form an ethnic group out of people with
different mother tongues and dispersed over a discontinuous temtory (like
the diaspora Jews). Social forces outside the normal ethnic criteria, such as
common religion, social position/status and/or political history (Germans as
ethnic representatives of the World War II enemy in the Soviet Union) may
compel members to adhere to a group membership which would otherwise
have been long since shed.
The weight of ethnic identity depends on historical circumstances. It
may not be consciously experienced in a situation of relative isolation from
outside influences. A peasant in north Germany before the Roman attempt
at conquest may not have been aware of any ethnic identity but certainly
very much of political and kin affiliation. The same may well have applied
to a Diola of the central Diola temtory. But a Diola residing on the fringes
of Diola temtory, where the influences (cultural, political, etc.) of different
people, such as the Bainunk, were felt, would be made aware of his or her
distinctiveness. In these contact zones-and with many non-isolated groups
(as the Bainunk) the whole territory was a contact zone-people met who
differed in language, but also in culture. Culture is not confined to dress and
songs, but also to more crucial aspects such as sociopsychological character-
istics (popularly termed "mentality"), which include the disposition towards
commerce, individuality, the ethics of work and saving, and so forth. In
such zones of contact questions of ethnicity certainly played a more impor-
tant role. Yet the actual degree was determined by the level of competition
between different ethnic models. If, for example, access to resources and sta-
tus was linked to ethnic affiliation, the latter would tend to gain weight (as
since the beginning of the colonial period, hence the appearance of
"tribalism").
Groups defined by ethnicity share a set of (generally inseparable) com-
mon characteristics gradually developed under specific conditions. These
sets, ethnic models (not ethnic groups), if in contact, rival with each other.
Through gradual acculturation, parts of a group may switch to a competing
ethnic model, a process often underestimated in historiography. The
'Mandlngization' of Bainunk and Beafadflajadinka (see above) continues.
The Bainunk and Kasanga have bken particularly affected by ethnic change
and still are.
Individuals are members of several corporate and non-corporate commu-
nities: ethnic group, kin, age, cult, status, neighborhood, etc. Each of these
PLACE NAMES AS iW HISTORICAL SOURCE 69
communities may theoretically leave traces in place names. Thus place

names may serve to deliminate former areas of such communities. Nature
names are most suited to define former language distributions, because terms
for components of nature are rarely loanwords. Language, in turn, is one of
the central criteria of ethnic affiliation, at least in most cases. If we bear in
mind all the restrictions of an equation of ethnic group with language group,
we may carefully use place names to indicate former areas of ethnic groups.
Culture names, on the other hand, may be expected to contain a compara-
tively high percentage of loanwords: among them titles such as faran in
Senegarnbia (from Mandinka) and Kaiser (<Caesar) in Germany, and settle-
ment terms such as -weiler in Germany (from Latin). This makes their use
as language indicators more risky. The presence of loanwords does not affect
the detection of spatial culture patterns.
Below, I shall give a fairly detailed southern Senegambian example
(place names Buduk, Brikama, Kaur) of how to reconstruct an area of com-
mon cultural traits that existed before our earliest written sources were
recorded.
VIII
The Chronological Stratification of Place Names
The change of language encompasses both its lexical body and its pho-
netic state. The change of meaning and the loss of words has to bear on
place names. If, to construct a case, the German word brink had vanished by,
say, 1400, the place name Brinkum (see above) had to be given before 1400.
Of course this rule has many exceptions. Old names can be transferred to
new settlements. This happened, to give but two examples, in the case of
naming Islamic settlements after the cradle of that religion (Mecca), and in
the case of the colonization of America, where settlers named their new
homes after their former Old World villages and towns.
Fashions and other non-linguistic influences in the naming of places
changed over time. In the early Middle Ages names with -leben,
"inheritance, assets," became popular among the Thuringians; names on
-stedt, "settlement," among the Saxons of north Germany; and -ingen in
southern Germany. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in all
Germany etyma such as -hausen, -dorf, -feld (which had also existed in
earlier times) became very popular. In the period of intensive settlement of
former forest areas (Landesausbau) during the same era this extension of set-
tlement into uninhabited temtory is reflected in place names with etyma like
-rod/-rude, -schlag, -schneid, refemng to the process of clearing (roden) the
land and of cutting (schlagen, schneiden) down trees.
Processes of intensive internal settlement, in areas amid pre-existing
villages, also occurred in southern Senegambia. I suspect that place names
indicate such a process for northern Kadiamatay (southeast of historical
FogniPonyi). A high concentration of place names with prefix ka- may
70 STEPHAN BUHNEN
bear testimony to villages founded by Diola amid older (ex-Bainunk) vil-

lages. Although settlements with ka- may have existed in the area before the
Diola expansion, they probably were rare. The oldest villages in the area,
those with traditions mentioning Bainunk as founders and those which were
the residence of lineages suspected to have been royal/ruling, hardly ever
contain the ka- prefix. The prefix was, and is, far more frequently used by
Diola speakers than by Bainunk. With the intensive influence of Diola on
the remaining Bainunk east of this expansion area Bainunk also made use of
the prefix for place naming. Thus in today's Diola and Bainunk temtory
north of river Casamance the ka- prefix may indicate relatively young set-
tlements. The Diola expansion into Fogniponyi was in full swing in the
mid-seventeenth century, as written evidence tells us, although we do not
know how long it had been going on.29 This process of expansion by
forming new villages between the older Bainunk ones differs from the Diola
expansion into Kalounaye, east of Jame and south of Kadiamoutaye: no ka-
prefixes hint to new Diola settlements. Here the Diola must have settled ex-
clusively in the pre-existing Bainunk villages.
The phonetic state of a place name may give us a clue to its relative
age. In the course of a sound shift the complete lexical body of a language is
changed (e.g., every initial p >f). If, after such a sound shift, the language
expands into the area of another, it may incorporate settlements with names
containing initial p (if the settlements and their names survive the culture
change), a relic of the superseded language. The analysis of the place names
of the area will lead to the conclusion that all initial-p names have to be at-
tributed to the substratum language, unless words containing initial p have
entered the 'new' language as loanwords. They are older than other place
names in the same area containing initial f,given by the speakers of the ex-
panded language. Research in the relative chronology of place names has to
start from a sound knowledge of the phonetic system of the languages in
question and its genesis.
The relative dating of place names is a delicate affair, and is virgin soil
in southern Senegambia research. So far only for Mandinka place names a
very crude dating of, to give a rough and yet speculative figure, post-1300
A.D., seems permissible. Inversely it may be concluded that a West Atlantic
place name in an area of Mandinka language since at least the mid-fifteenth
century must be older than this date. As a result of this reasoning several
places in Niani (Buduk, Kaur, Jarume) must have been named before this
expansion of Mandinka into that land (unless they were loan names, which
seems improbable).
Flurnamen, Regional Names, Hydronyms, Ethnonyms
Flurnamen designate areas outside settlements: fields, meadows, forests,

elevations, swamps, etc. Their formation and their interpretation resemble
that of place names. In Africa no Flurnamen are documented in historical

records. We are totally dependent on today's versions. It is not exceptional
for a Flurname to become a place name or vice versa. A site retains the
name of a former settlement, which has been abandoned, or a new settlement
is founded in an area already named with a Flurname. A fairly frequent relo-
cation of settlements over short distances was caused by changes in the
water table, by military or economic motives, by social tensions, etc.
The names of abandoned settlements (German Wustung, Mandinka
tumbung) play an important role in place names research. In southern
Senegambia the memory of abandoned settlements is kept alive by conspic-
uous indicators: big trees planted and tended by humans, such as baobabs or
cotton trees (fromagiers). Some abandoned settlements figure prominently in
the accounts of oral tradition, among them Abisa/Bisa and Jireji, former res-
idences of the kings of southwest Kasa and Geregia respectively.
Names of countries/regions may also be significant in historical
reconstruction. The Kalunkadugu area of northern Niani is testimony to the
former ethnic identity of its inhabitants. This regional name is composed of
Kalunka and dugu, the latter being Mandinka for "land," rendering "Kalunka-
land." Kalunka again is composed of the locative prefix ka-, the Mandinka
affiliative suffix -nka, "person/people of," and a stem lun. The meaning of
this component is "person of lun-placeiland." Thus Kalunkadugu is the
"land of the lun-land-people." The stem 1u:n recurs in the ethnonym ba-Au:n
"Bainunk." The initial consonants 1 and ii are homo-organic (see section on
sound shift); the Fogni Diola call the Bainunk ku-1u:n (or fa-ru:n, r being,
in turn, a sound equivalent of I). Kalunkadugu is the "land of the Bainunk-
land-people." The doubling of the locative element "land (ka- and -dugu) re-
quires explanation. The component kalunka, once formed, became an
ethnonym ("Bainunk"), just as Kasinka is Mandinka for "Serer." The latter
was formed accordingly: locative prefix ka- and suffix -nka plus stem sin
"Sine" (a land of the Serer). Today's Mandinka "Kasinka" has turned from an
appellative into a proper name (an ethnonym); its construction is not under-
stood by most users of the word. The same may be assumed for "Kalunka."
Once turned into a proper name, it would need an additional locative element
like -dugu to form a region's name (Kalunkaainunk-land).
The name of the state of Kabu is composed of the locative prefix ka-
and a stem -bu. The stem obviously lacks the final consonant. Very early
European sources allow us to reconstruct the name's original shape. Alvise
Cadamosto, in his report of his 1455 and 1456 voyages to the river Gambia,
wrote of the river and a country by the name of Gambra or C~mbra.~O In the
first decade of the sixteenth century Duarte Pacheco Pereira wrote of the river
Gambia as the border between the kingdom of Jolof in the north, "and that
of Guambea, which, in the language of the Mandinka, is also called
Gu~buu."~' The Asia of Jo2o de Barros, published in 1552 but based on doc-
uments dating back to the 1470s and 1480s, distinguished two names for the
river, G a m b u (by the riparian population) and G a m b e a (by the
Port~guese).~~
STEPHAN BUHNEN
The early versions Cambra, Gambra, G ~ m b uGuabuu , ~ ~ and Guambea3

for both, Kabu and the river Gambia, share the prefix ka-lga- (unnasalized,
and nasalized variants kam-, gum-). The stems are bra, bu, and bea. The first
of these disappeared after k i n g mentioned by Cadarnosto, the second became
generally accepted for the land Kabu, the third for the river Gambia.
Cadamosto's stem bra suggests an r as the missing final consonant in
Kabu's stem, leading us to *bur as the complete form. This stem may be
the Wolof bu:r, "lung." Kabu, as *gambur(a)and *kabur, may be interpreted
as "placePand of the king." State names derived from their rulers' title are
known to have existed in other parts of the region and the
Two causes for the fact that a Wolof word came to be used for the
Mandinka state of Kabu are conceivable. Either Cadamosto had heard the
word from a northern Senegambian Wolof interpreter he had taken along for
this voyage of reconnaissance, and/or inhabitants of the northern shore of
the Gambia, opposite Kabu, spoke Wolof. This seems unlikely, as this
kingdom of Wuli was inhabited by Mandinka. But Wuli was part of the
Wolof empire of Jolof around 1500,36and this may already have been the
case half a century earlier, when Cadamosto had heard the possible Wolof
word Gambra on the Upper Gambia. Gomes had k e n informed in the same
area and in the same year (1456) of the emperor of Mali in the Wolof form
Bormelli (bur of Mali).37As Jolof had only had a very peripheral influence
on Kabu, being its northern neighbor, the Wolof designation *kabur can
only have been created here, on the northern fringe of Kabu, on the banks of
the Gambia. This name may have won general acceptance only through the
Portuguese adoption of it and its subsequent diffusion. Admittedly, different
etymologies of "Kabu" are conceivable (see, e.g., a village named Kambor
in Kabu-Mana).
A possible alternative name of Kabu was *Bating as found in the mys-
terious Battimatlsa (the mansa, "king" of Batti) mentioned by Cadamosto as
located on the Gambia's south bank west of K a n t ~ r aThis. ~ ~ personage may
be identified as the mansa of Pating, a province of Kabu reputed by some
oral traditions to have been the nucleus of K a b ~This. ~ ~imagery of oral tra-
dition may be translated as reflecting Pating's former political predominance
in Kabu. Because Kabu became generally accepted as the name of the state,
Pating may have been dropped as the name of Kabu as a whole. The docu-
ments relating to the 1456 voyages of Cadamosto and Gomes are the only
ones mentioning this name. On the other hand the term m a n s a in
Battimansa contradicts the above identification with the king of Kabu. The
latter was titled faranifarin, as mentioned in sixteenth century (and later)
sources: Farim cab^.^^ The title originally designated Mali's provincial
governor^.^^ Since Kabu was a province of Mali in the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, its kings held the titlefaran.42 The same applied to Sankola
and other regional powers, such as Bira~u,"~ Landuma, Kokoli, Susu, as
well as other less important ones, such as FogniFonyi (see note 59) and
Kiang. The more general mansa ("king") could apply both to the supreme
king of Mali (Mande-maasa) and to the kings of Kabu's constituent states,
one of whom was the Pating-mansa (Battimansa). Hence if Gomes and

Cadamosto both termed the king of Sankola a faran (see above) and men-
tioned his subordination to the king of Mali, but applied the (in the con-
temporary circumstances) lesser title mansa to the king of Pating, the latter
could not have k e n king of all Kabu.
Ethnonyms (names of ethnic groups) are not toponyms. Yet they are
often derived from the latter. The Sarankole/Serexole, also called Soninke,
may have been named after a river TerekoleRerexole in their heartland (if the
latter was not named after the Sarankole). The Mandinka/Malinke/Maninka
are named after the variant regional names Mande/Mall/Mane by adding the
Mandinka suffix -nka to the regional name. Accordingly the Kasanga have
been named, in Mandinka, after their land Kasa. The Kasanga call them-
selves iha:ja, and are called bihaja, bugeca, igeca by the southern Bainunk.
These are composed of the plural prefixes i- and bilbu-, and a stem ha:ja or
geca. While a root ha:j or gee is unknown to me, there remains the
possibility that the stems are again composed of a slurred ka-jalca. This
could well be a variant of Kasa, as Kasanga practice an according consonant
alternation This assumption is supported by the northern Balanta name
can-ja, or simply ja:, for their own territory, which was once part of K a ~ a , 4 ~
and be-ja: ('?a:-people") for the Kasanga.
Ethnonyms may also describe a people or their land. The Diola, espe-
cially a group south of the lower Casamance, were once called
Falupos/Fulupos and are still known as the Fulup/Huluf. This probably is
Diola fa-lup "swamp people," formed by the prefix faifulhu- for the plural of
persons, and the stem -luf/lup, "mud/loam, swampy."46This is an apt de-
scription of their mangrove-hemmed habitat. It also seems to name Buluf.
Hydronyms may play an extremely important role for the prehistory of
Africa. European rivers often bear particularly ancient names. Whereas
individual settlements are founded and sooner or later abandoned, their names
eventually falling into oblivion, rivers are permanent and bear names known
and used over a wide area. Should many inhabitants of a given region leave.
the river's name will last with those who remain, even if they are few.
Because of the antiquity of many river names, these lend themselves to
interpretation only on the basis of a sound reconstruction of languages out
of use for centuries, not infrequently for millennia.
It seems that many of southern Senegambia's river names are fairly re-
cent constructions, though. Most of them are transparent. They name rivers
after countries and settlements along their course, as demonstrated in the
case of "Gambia" noted above. The river Casamance was named after the
ruler of Kasa (Kasa-mansa). Soungrougou is a Bainunk rendition of the
Mandinka "Sonkodu" (-du, "land," of the Sonkos, the original royal
lineage): Sonkodu(gu) > Sungurugu (o > u , k > g, d > r). This practice
continues to the present day. River-names often are appellatives not yet
turned into proper names. Today's Bainunk call the Soungrougou Jaka:nw
ko Sorlkodu or Jaka:nw ko Tobor, Sonkodu and Tobor being a land and a
renowned village on the river banks, jaka:m being Bainunk for "river," with
74 STEPHAN BUHNEN
the components connected by the genitival affix ko. In everyday language

the river is simply termed "river, great water" (Mandinka fankaso, b a ,
Bainunk jaka:m). The latter also applies to the naming of the Casamance
and Rio Cacheu by their respective adjoining populations, and the Gambia
(Mandinka ji, "water"). The names Gambia and Casamance are indigenous
appellatives (of the fifteenth century) adopted as proper names and introduced
into general use by the Portuguese. "Rio Cacheu" is a purely Portuguese
creation (after their settlement Cacheu).
Yet there are genuine hydronyms. The names of most of the numerous
tidal marigots branching off the lower Casamance are indigenous, but as yet
not understood. A cartographic rendering of all toponyms with a prefix fia-
found in the toponymic inventories referred to below displays several stnk-
ing features (see map 6). We find a remarkable concentration of place names
between the Rio Cacheu and the lower Gambia. This may be attributed to
the particular frequency of this prefix as a plural marker in Bainunk and
Kasanga. A second, and very significant, concentration is that of hydronyms
almost exclusively between the Rios Geba and Corubal. I dare not interpret
this pattern, although one is tempted to link it to the Pajadinka and Beafada
substratum in Kabu.J7
Map 6: Toponyms with prefix na-

(square: place name, rhombus: hydronym)
Place Name Inventories

An inventory of place names of a given area is the basis of all work on
spatial distributions. In an area where languages classified by prefixes are
spoken, such a compilation should also contain a list of stems occumng in
the place names. For certain countries place name inventories have been
published, saving lucky researchers a lot of work. This is the case for
GuinC-Bissau, The Gambia, and Senegal.48The inventories for these coun-
tries are based on place names found on maps, so their quality corresponds
to those maps. These have to be cross-checked on the terrain. The carto-
graphic base, including the place names, for southern Senegambia is
excellent. For countries not covered by published inventories, maps of de-
tailed resolution (minimum scale 1 : 50,000) are to be consulted. For
Senegal the maps of this scale even mention the different village quarters in
areas of dispersed settlement (as in Diola temtory). Names of quarters and of
compounds, where available through maps or terrain reconnaissance, should
be incorporated into place name research as many of these are older and/or
more significant historically than the modem village name.
Work in the field has to accompany work with maps, since it serves to
verify the place names found on maps, to collect further place names
(villages, but also quarters, compounds, Flurnamen, etc.) and additional in-
formation on names, on oral traditions, and on variants of the collected
names. Variants of the modem and historical place names Brikama and
Manduar in Kombo, preserved by oral tradition, have helped me to verify the
identity and to understand the structure of the place name (see below). In the
case of Ndemban in historical Fogniponyi a variant place name Kayi (also
used for its royal shrine), not found on maps after ca. 1900, is the only safe
confirmation of my earlier assumption that it was the seat of a royal branch
of the Sanyang lineage: Kayi is Diola for "king's place" (locative prefix ka-
plus stem yi, "king, royal"). Another two former seats of a king and a royal
lineage branch respectively. Geregia (east of Fogni) and Conjongolon
( K a ~ a ) could
, ~ ~ be identified only by field enquiries, not being found on
modem maps. The former is an abandoned settlement known locally as
JirejilGireji1Jire:gi (north of Bwiam), the latter is called Ayongolo by its
present Manjak inhabitants and is either very close to or identical with
Adun, which figures prominently in some traditions about the Biai of Kasa
(its former royal lineage).
Compound names may also contribute to the solution of research prob-
lems. In 1849 Bertrand-BocandC wrote of a Bainunk place in Kombo by the
name of J ~ m i This. ~ piece
~ of information puzzled me, not expecting any
Bainunk villages in Kombo or Fogni in the mid-nineteenth century, as
Kombo had been described as a Diola and/or Mandinka country since the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries and Fogni as Diola since the late eighteenth
century. After I had realized the possible identity of Janzi with a place called
76 STEPHAN BUHNEN
Yarnzt, Geremy, Jarme, or Yaruma in maps and reports from the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries5' and located in the Faraba area, I went there and
asked for a place of this name. In fact a Jarume does still exist, as the name
of a compound in Faraba-Banta, which once belonged to the Sanyang, the
royal lineage of Fogni, Kombo's eastern neighbor (Faraba being near their
common border). In the course of the violent confrontation in Fogni, men-
tioned in written sources since the mid-seventeenth century, between the
expanding stateless (and anti-state) northern Diola and the state-controlling
Bainunk, the latter became gradually "diola-ized." In this situation ethnicity
was closely linked to the attitude towards kingship (Diola contra, Bainunk
pro), the symbolic and factual concentrate of the state.52In material and so-
cial terms (tribute, status, etc.) members of the Bainunk royal lineage, their
social position based on kingship, would have more to lose than common-
ers when changing their ethnic affiliation to that of the Diola model, which
was the antithesis of state orientation. They can be expected to have been
the last to change their ethnic affiliation by becoming Diolas. The Sanyang
of Ndemban were a branch of the royal lineage. The memory of their former
Bainunk identity has been lost, even among today's Sanyang of Ndemban,
but it had not yet faded away in the mid-nineteenth century, when Bertrand-
Bocandk wrote of the Bainunk village of Jami, though no other contempo-
rary document reveals any knowledge of the former Bainunk of Fogni.
Two Place Name Groups in Southern Senegambia:

The "Gambia-Kogon Zone"
The following examples demonstrate different aspects of place name re-

search: the reconstruction of the original name and the interpretation of spa-
tial distribution. I have identified a zone of common key place names in
southern Senegambia delineating a former area of common cultural traits
transgressing ethnic borders. The place names in question are
BuduklBuruklBerakolBirkoIBrikama, and a variety of names with a stem ur
(generally with prefix k ~ - )The
. ~ area
~ of distribution reaches from the north
bank of river Gambia to the south bank of river Kogon, which is why I
have christened it the "Gambia-Kogon zone."
So far I have located 33 places named Buduk/Puduk, Buruk, Berako,
Birko, etc. (including those with an am- prefix on the Bijagos' archipelago),
and 12 named Brikama. Except for Berako, the variants do not cluster.
Rather, each of the variants is to be found in different parts of the zone (see
map 7).
The Puduk/Buduk, Buruk, Baruk, and Berako variants are composed of a
prefix pulbulbalbe and a stem duklruklrak. Some carry a suffix -01a.
BurkoBruko and BirkoBriko are metathesis alternatives and have lost the
stemlprefix vowel respectively. Vowels variants i and u are to be considered
negligible: Kasa-Brikama is spelled Brucarna and Bulcanuz in sources of the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.54Both seem to indicate an

original bu- prefix. This is confirmed by those variants that preserve the
prefix vowel (the names with a stem duk): BudukPuduk.
Variants with a be- prefix (Berako) are mainly restricted to the upper
Rio Cacheu. Balanta is one of the languages spoken there (but Mandinka is
too). There is no bu- prefix in Balanta, but there is a bd- prefix, which may
explain the Berako variants. And p for initial b (Puduk for Buduk) in the
area between the Rios Geba and Corubal corresponds to the sound circum-
stances of that area. A northern tributary to the lower Corubal is the Rio
Pulom, certainly equivalent to the widespread West Atlantic bulom, "river,
creek, swamp."55The stems duk and ruk are identical, d and r being homo-
organic: sixteenth-century ' B r ~ c oin' ~GuinaldQuinara
~ is today's Buduco.
The rak variant may also safely be regarded as identical.
In this analysis, I neglect the occasional suffix -ola, which may carry
the value of a definitive "the" (as it does in Bainunk and Mandinka). I sus-
pect further variants for the stem, if not for the place name, in Juluk (luk
corresponds to ruk), Tenduk, Bakendik, etc. (see numbered place names on
map 7). I also suspect that Brikama is not an independent place name, but a
variant of Brika, extended by a suffix -ma. The following facts led me to
this conclusion:
The griot Dembo Konteh in Kombo-Brikama menti~ned,~~without be-
ing asked for them, Birkabirka and Dajuluko as former names of Bnkama,
and Jajuwari as a former name of Manduar, both residences of branches of
Kombo's royal lineage, the Bojang. Birkabirka obviously is a doubled
Birka. Birka again is identical with BirkoDurko, which belongs to our
group of place names with a ruk stem. A map of the Kurlanders of the
1650s corroborates this identification, mentioning Brikama as the
Konigreich Birikanna, plus a settlement Combo and a rio B r u c ~ the ,~~
latter's name corresponding to Brika/Bruko. Birka is an obvious shortened
version of BirkamalBrikama. The different versions of Brikama and Manduar
share an analogous word structure. Prefix ju- and preprefix jalda- occur in
both, Da-ju-luko and Ja-ju-xlari. Their respective stems are luk and war, the
latter recurring in the variant Manduar ( m a n - d u - x ~ a r ) Thus,
. ~ ~ the stem
luklruk is common to both the Dajuluko and the Birka-Birka versions of
Brikama. The combination of two prefixes (jalda- and ju-) reveals that at the
time of naming (by adding a prefix jalda-) of Dajuluko the name's core was
juluk,-and juwar in the case of ManduadJajuwar, The ju- had, then and in
these words, lost its prefix value.
Yet another confirmation of luk, and thus ruk, as the stem of Brikama
may be seen in the possible identity of a no-longer-existing Bricam60
(between Moyafara and Maka in Balmadou on the middle Casamance river)
with the Beriko village "near Diana-Ba" of a local oral tradition about the
jihad of the 1 8 4 0 ~ .Former
~' Bricam and Diana-Ba are separated only by the
Casamance. Also, the kasanga tradition names the last king of kasa, who
resided at Brikama, 'mansa Birkoto,' which may be interpreted as Mandinka
Birko-to. "at Birko."
1 Backerena 5 Bu&, Bi&o (aband.) 0 Ba/Be/Bu-&, Bu&o, Bike
2 Ten* 6 Bi& @ Be-&-o
3 J u a (Karantaba) 7 BUM, B u d Bu/Pu-d~&
Ju&u 8 Ku-r& Baama
4 Ku& (Mansoa-Aria) Churo-B&
Bijagos: A m - b e k o , A m - b u ~ o
Map 7
Place names of the
BudukIBrikama group
Thus it seems that Bnkama is a "Brika" compounded with a -masuffix.

This suffix does not, as far as I know, exist in ariy language spoken in the
area today. In GuinC-Conakry, however, it is encountered in place names of
Loma/Toma (a southwestern Mande language) and equivalent of Mandinka
-du, "land/~illage."~~ And Paul Hair assumes that in Sierra Leone -ma is a
Mande suffix "with a locative connotation, i.e. 'place of' . . . in Mende
towns, but I have also seen it in Susu In southern Senegambia,
I know of only one occurrence of this suffix in a place name: BoudiCmar
(bujema:) in the small historical Bainunk state of BoudiC (buje). The place
was called Bujt5 in the seventeenth century.@This case of a village named
after the state it is part of (because in the eyes of the name-givers it was the
most important one) is paralleled by Mampating in Pating. And, just as
significant, both share the affix ma, as a suffix and as a prefix respectively.
The West Atlantic prefix ma- occurs in many southern Senegambian place
names. It obviously served, among other purposes, as a locative. I suspect
that this locative was adopted by Mandinka and other Mande languages (such
as Susu and Loma), as they did with the West Atlantic ka- prefix (see
above). But instead of retaining its prefix character they placed ma behind
the word, changing it to a suffix. The postposition of ma in Brikama hints
at Mandinka as the language of those who developed this variant of a pre-ex-
isting Brika name of the same place.
Having reconstructed the original name as bu-duklruk, and having estab-
lished the identity of Brikama and the Brikauduk group, we proceed to the
etymological interpretation of the place name. I have not yet found a con-
vincing linguistic hint to the meaning of dukiruk. Below, I introduce the
few stems with certain sound similarities, which I have come across.
The stem d u k l r u k may be cognate of Bainunk a - d i k , "village,
compound." and Beafada dage, illag age."^^ Other possibilities are Bainunk
be-ra:x, "meeting:" di-ra:.u, "soil, land;" Manjak t~a-la-jug,"king;" and
metak, "king's first counselor;" as well as Temne orok, "regent." The most
direct parallel may be Diola huifu-ten-duk (-ai). This is a shrine concerned
with community and judicial affairs discussed at meetings of villagelshrine
elders. It is attested for the Diolas of the Esulalu and Banjal areas. The name
of the village of Tenduk hints at a (former) presence in Buluf, too. In
southern Balanta villages the executive power in a village rests with the
youngest age group of the initiated men, the bathuc. Stem thuc may be a
cognate of Diola duk. A similar and probably related stem tok in the
Bainunk dialect spoken in Tobor (opposite Ziguinchor) forms batok, which
was explained to me as meaning "meeting place." And it was at this batok
that villagers would pray (probably at a shrine) for a productive rainy season
and against diseases afflicting individuals. As community concerns,
particularly the procurement of rain, were at the core of the king's office and
meetings would always be held at the residence of the king or at his shrine,
this stem could well be the semantic root of place names denoting
capital^."^^ But balok may be derived from Portuguese Creole baluque,
80 STEPHAN BUHNEN
"dance, festivity." On the other hand, the latter might, as many others, be
derived from the Bainunk word.
Alvares de Almada and Donelha, two late sixteenth-century Capverdian
merchants, are our best-informed authors in their era. Their testimonies are
independent of each other.67Both possibly give us an identical clue to the
meaning of both Bruko and Brikama. Describing Kasa-Brikama, Alvares de
Almada wrote of "Brurama, which is the court [cbrte] where the kings re-
side." Donelha wrote of "Brucama, which is what his palaces [pacos] are
called and where he lives." And concerning QuinardGuinala, Alvares de
Almada wrote of "palaces [pacos], which they call B r u ~ o . "The ~ ~ English
translation "palace" does not distinguish between the residence of a king
(which is meant here: paco) and a splendid building (paldcio). Neither au-
thors used the word aldea, "village," but rather cbrte andpacos, the latter in
the plural form; both denote an aristocratic or royal residence. The reason
that both authors equated Brikama and Bruko with such a specific function
may well have been the royal inhabitant rather than the lexical meaning of
the place names. Yet, firstly, the uniformity of seemingly explaining the
place names as translations (chama) of cbrte and pacos, and, secondly, the
plural form ("palaces, which they call Bruco") hinting at a more general use
of Bruco for "palaces" convey the impression that both authors gave cbrte
and pacos as translations of appellatives rather than as mere renderings of the
places' function.
A second-though less accurate-and non-linguistic method of uncover-
ing the etymological origin may be the identification of certain features the
respective places share. This path seems to corroborate the connotations
("Brikama" and "Buduk" = "court, palace") in Alvares de Almada's and
Donelha's testimonies. Remarkably many places of the BuduWrikama
group were residences of kings and/or of branches of royal lineages:
Kombo: Brikama's Bojang lineage overlord of all Kombo.
Niamina: Brikama's Sonko-Yabo were the country's royal
lineage.69
'Bereck' (Bruko in Jimara?): Sumaway, King of Bereck subject
to Kantora's king.70
Kasa: Brikama, permanent residence of kings of Kasa7'
(tradition: a Biai lineage).
Balmadou: Bricam, one of "trois capitales alternatives" (a
Sonko-Yabo lineage).72
Birasu or Korla: Buruko, a "small family kingdom" of a
Manjang lineage73
Biadi (part of Birasu): Bricama, "residence du chef (famille
man jar^)."'^
Sankola: Brikama, earliest capital according to oral t r a d i t i ~ n . ~ ~
Badora: Bricama was the capital (royal lineage Sanyang, later

Na~~ki).~~
QuindGuinala: Bruco/Buduco was the capital77
ChimilXime: Puduco was the "Capitale" (Poudoukouchiom).7x
CosseKose: Puduco was the capital (Poudoukoukiour)?x
Corubal: Boudouc was the ~apital.7~
Orango Grande (a Bijago island): Tradition has Ambuduco as
its "first" village.79
14 out of the total of 45 places as yet identified with names of the
BudukDrikama group are thus seats of kings or of dominant lineages.x0
Most of the 4 5 villages have not been investigated historically. The suspi-
cion of a link between a place's function as a royal residence and its
Buduk/Brikama group name should induce future inquiry in the settlements
concerned. I expect that many of them will be added to the above list.
Perhaps one may go so far as to term Buduk/Brikama/etc. standard place
names for capitals. These place names may help to understand the history of
an area. The fact that, as far as I know, none of the -ur place names also
found all across the Gambia-Kogon zone were seats of royal lineages, adds
to the argument in favor of the Buduk/Brikama group names carrying a se-
mantic value of "royal settlement." In roughly the same area as the place
names just dealt with, names on a stem -ur occur, although in more modest
numbers (see map 8). Generally this stem carries a prefix ka-, and it appears
in this form in all sub-areas. But other prefixes are also added, either with
the stem only (Bi-ur, Ja-uru?), with a locative preprefix nm- (Ma-sa-ur), or
with Kaur (Ja-ka-ur, Bu-ka-ur). Again, we find the bilbi- variant prefix in
the Balanta (and Mansua/Sua/-Kunante) area (see Berako above). The
etymology of the stem -ur is unknown.
The areas covered by the Buduk/Brikama group and the -ur group place
names are largely congruent, at least in their north-south and east-west ex-
tensions (see map 9). Both cover roughly 300 km from north to south and a
maximum of 200 km from east to west. The place name groups adhere to
the north bank of the Gambia as the northern border and the south bank of
the Kogon as the southern border. The core areas of the Diolaxl and the
Balantax2and the Papel and Nalu territories are void of place names of the
groups, as is Kabu (with one peripheral exception: Jimara-Bruko). Also ex-
empt are BoudiC and Jasin (possible exception: Jaourou) in the northeast,
and the lands of the Bainunk between river Casamance and Rio Cacheu
(unless Buruhu south of Sindone belongs, as a Buruku variant, to our
group). The scarcity in the region north of the upper Casamance is due to
the very sparse settlement on this plateau, which is covered by a fairly ster-
ile ferruginous duricrust and intersected by few drainage gullies suitable for
rice cultivation. On the other hand, the zone of our place names includes
southwest Niani, the Bijago archipelago, and an area on the upper
Kogonx3-and probably Niumi (Bakendik, Jurunku, clan name Burko).
Kaur D Biur ( B i j a g o s : Rmbiur)
BuKaur + o t h e r s u ~ t h- u r
Map 8
Place names on a stem - u r
B ~ d u k l B l i k a r n aI e t r . -ur Sankola (c.18401
Map 9
The Gambia-Kogon Zone
STEPHAN BUHNEN
The place names of our two groups are concentrated in certain areas: the
north bend of the middle Gambia, between the lower Gambia and the lower
Casamance, on the upper Rio Cacheu, between the lower courses of Rio
Geba and Rio Corubal, between Rio Grande de Buba and the Kogon, and on
some of the Bijago Islands. Reasons for these concentrations are not yet
known.
The Gambia-Kogon Zone thus covers the areas of numerous ethnic
groups. Neglecting the post-1900 migrations of the Balanta, Manjak,
Mankanya, etc., these included:
Mandinka: Niani, Niamina, Jimara, Jarra, Kiang, Kombo,
Niumi, Balmadou (all ex-Bainunk), Sankola (ex-Beafada?),
Birasu, Oyfloye (both ex-Kasanga)
Diola: Kadiamoutay, Buluf (both ex-Bainunk)
Bainunk: westernmost Kasa, Jasin
Manjak: Churo
Mankanya: Bula
Bijago: Bijago archipelago
Beafada: Badora, Xime, Corubal, Cosse, Guinala, Balula,
Gubisseco
Fula: Forrea (ex-Beafada)
This ethnic situation is the result of historical processes of culture
change, like the expansion of the Diola and Balanta, but foremost that of the
Mandinka from the Mali nucleus. In the presumed ethnic situation before
these expansions (map 4 ) , only the Bainunk and Kasanga, the Mankanya and
Manjak, the Beafada, and the Bijagos inhabited the Gambia-Kogon zone of
place names. The bulk (more than 90%)of the area was Bainunk and Beafada
territory. Yet the fact remains that several distinct languages were spoken in
this zone. If the place names had not been formed and given in an epoch
when one language was spoken in the whole area, which I consider improb-
able, the names must have transcended language barriers. Thus they were
either based on lexical items common to those languages (as attested for the
prefixes ka- and bu-, though not yet for the stems duklruk and -ur) or the
place names were borrowed by one language from another as loan names.
Prerequisites for the wide dispersion of the place names through borrowing
are contact between those areas/cultures lending a word and those borrowing,
and a certain prestige of the names concerned. Prestige leading to loaning is
based on a hierarchy of cultures. Which culture in the Gambia-Kogon zone
may have been seen as 'superior' to others? It cannot have been that of the
Bijagos, because we find a feature attesting the borrowing of the place
names: a locative prefix am- was added to the names (Ambuduc, Amburco,
Ambiur). The rare occurrences of our place names in the ManjWankanya
territory seems to preclude them as well. Both Bijagos and
Manjak/Mankanya must have been recipients rather than donors. We are
left with the Bainunk, the Kasanga, and the Beafada as possible donors. The
uniformity of spatial distribution of both place name groups does not allow
conclusions as to their spatial origin. The question as to which of these eth-
nic groups had 'invented' and disseminated the place names remains unan-
swered
At the base of my scenario is the hypothesis that the ethnic situation
encountered by the early Portuguese had developed from the gradual accultur-
ation of the region's inhabitants by an infiltration of the Mandinka culture,
beginning in the northeast. Before this Mandinka expansion had reached the
north bend of the middle Gambia the Gambia-Kogon zone had been (a fur-
ther hypothesis) uniformly inhabited by Bainunk in the north, Kasanga in
the center, and Beafada in the south, while the mangrove areas were the habi-
tat of the Diola, ManjaWapel, Balanta, and Nalu. This region of the
Bainunk, Kasanga, and Beafada formed the core of the Gambia-Kogon zone.
If this latter hypothesis is correct we may conclude conversely that the zone
delineates a region once inhabited by members of these ethnic groups, plus,
of course, those groups who borrowed the place names. This could be of
help in reconstructing former ethnic temtories. It supports my interpretation
of the regional name Kalunkadugu (Niani) north of the middle Gambia bend
as "Bainunk-land" (see above): place names of both groups (Buduk. Kaur)
occur north of the middle Gambia
The place names delineate a former area of certain common culture traits
beyond the field of toponyms. The core ethnic groups (Bainunk, Kasanga,
Beafada) shared economic, social, and political characteristics evidenced by
the written sources of the sixteenth century. Among these were a developed
commercial production and distribution, an intensive judicial enslavement
reflecting deep social fissures, kingship with extensive secular powers.
ManjakPapeWankanya (Brame) also shared these features.
But while the people of these groups shared important traits, they also
differed in other respects, not only in their languages. Most essential were
differences in the kinship structure. While the Bainunk and Kasanga lived in
patrilineages, the Brame lived in matriclans. And the Beafada society, about
which very little has been published, may have incorporated components of
both systems. The Bainunk and Kasanga lived in aggregated villages, the
Bnme and the Beafada in dispersed settlements. It was the specific combina-
tion of such features, and of many others as yet undetected, that formed
distinct ethnic groups speaking their distinct languages.
Thus the Gambia-Kogon zone of the Bainunk, Kasanga, and Beafada
had, despite its ethnic diversity, a common background of commercial and
political structures. More than that, extensive parts of it had been ruled by a
farun in the 1450s the Farisangul. I identify him as the farari of Sankola
(see note 38). His authority extended from the middle Gambia in the north
to the Beafada lands between the rivers Geba and C o r ~ b a lBut
. ~ ~by that time
great parts of the zone, such as core-Sankola itself and Niani, had
presumably already been m a n d i n g i ~ e d This
. ~ ~ major state Sankola. not
mentioned again after 1456. probably collapsed soon after.87
STEPHAN BUHNEN
The clearcut border of our place name zone with Kabu (map 10) is sur-
prising and requires an explanation. Both Gambia-Kogon Zone and Kabu had
originally been n ~ n - M a n d i n k a .Both
~ ~ were inhabited by populations
cultivating dry crops, forming kingdoms, taking part in commercial produc-
tion and trade. Both are equipped with a layer of West Atlantic place
names,89 which rules out an obliteration of supposedly pre-existing
BudukBrikama and -ur place names in Kabu by the expanding Mandinka
language. And while Kabu's entire population adopted the Mandinka culture
and identity, a great part of the Gambia-Kogon zone's population did the
very same. And yet the place names of the BudukDrikama and the -ur
groups are to be found in mandingized parts of the Gambia-Kogon Zone, but
not in Kabu. It follows that there must have existed a sharply defined border
between the two entities. Why did the prestige of the standard place names
of the Gambia-Kogon Zone not extend to Kabu? What distinguished the
two? Was it an external influence on either of the two, from which the other
was excluded? This could have been exerted by an early Mande power, such
as Ghana, Susu, or early Mali, but it might just as well have been a cultur-
ally dominant regional power not known through written sources.
The difference may also have been based on political distinctions, on
the affiliation to two states, Kabu and a Gambia-Kogon state. Or was it a
distinction of the languages formerly spoken in the Gambia-Kogon Zone
and in Kabu? At the outset this seems unlikely, a s I suspect
PajadinkaBeafada to have been the pre-Mandinka language of Kabu and a
large part of the Gambia-Kogon Zone, too.90 Yet there is one process
involving language and culture change that could explain the Gambia-Kogon
Zone's distinctive set of place names, at the level of our present historical
knowledge about the region, without excessively taxing our speculative
abilities: if the BudukDrikama and -ur place names had been given after
Kabu and before the Gambia-Kogon Zone populations had adopted the
Mandinka identity and language, they could well have spread in the latter,
and be excluded from the former (see map 11). The same explanation might,
by the way, be valid for Wuli as well.
This hypothesis gives rise to new questions and preliminary inferences.
Firstly, the Buduk/Brikama and -ur place names would be relatively recent
(given after Kabu's culture change). Secondly, only a fairly long interim be-
tween the completion of the acculturation of Kabu's population and the be-
ginning of that of the Gambia-Kogon Zone could explain the adoption of
the place names over the extensive zone area. To achieve such a wide and
even dispersion of the concerned place names this interim must have lasted
for many decades, if not-more probably-for centuries. Which
circumstances had led to a temporary halt in the westward progress of culture
change? Was it a temporary interruption of Mali's expansion? Or was it the
existence of a powerful and hence prestigious state covering the Gambia-
Kogon zone, or at least its eastern part? The state's prestige in the region
must have, for a limited period, matched that of Mali and the Mandinka, and
may thus have served as a barrier for the diffusion of the Mandinka culture.
€I Kabu p r o p e r
[nyantho-states,
flana+ Tunana 1
OI patins
neibouring
~ane/~ane-states
-
;id
Sanyang-states
( Kantora + Kapara 1
Map 10
Kabu
Piling assumption upon assumption, one might venture that a 'pre-

Mandinka' Sankola may have been this power, which did not shape the
place names' zone, but allowed it to emerge. Sanko-la and its variant
Sonko-la is Mandinka for "land/home of the Sonko." The a > o and g > k
shifts (Fari-sangullFaro-sangoli9' > Sonkola) are also encountered in
historical Sangedegug2> (modern) Sonkodu(gu). The core of Sankola's
northern territories may be indicated by the distribution of Sonkos as royal
lineages (see map 12). Possibly the Sonko also furnished lungs in Beafada
states, such as Cuor. The predominance of the Sonkos of
SonkoduJSangedegu (and of Jarra and Niarnina), whose rule once extended to
the lower Gambia, and included non-Sonko temtories (Geregia, "Sambu-
land," western Sonkodu), might well be a northwestern vestige of Sankola's
earlier position as a hegemonic power.92
Map 12
Sonko as Royal Lineage
(and Manjang: Mainly Birasu)
STEPHAN B UHNEN
Oral tradition of the Kasanga and the (southern) Ijaher-Bainunk often

names the Beafada, occasionally also the Nalu and Landuma, as closely
'related' to the BainunWasanga, and, vice versa, the Beafada claim a kin re-
lationship with the Kasanga. These relationships ("originally we were the
same") generally express either a factual relationship (e.g. through intemar-
riage or through remembered culture change) or an adopted relationship. The
latter serves to enhance the group's own prestige by claiming descent from a
famed group, such as the Mandinka, or by claiming descent of other groups
from their own group. In Bainunk traditions both elements are met: the
Bainunk are presented as descending from the Mandinka of Mali (or the latter
as having been Bainunk) and other groups (from the Serer to the Diola,
Balanta, Beafada, Nalu, Landuma) as descending from the Bainunk.
Do these traditions reflect a faint memory of a former common state in-
corporating the groups mentioned? Or are they results of a former contiguity
of Kasanga and Beafada in the OioJWoye area?93Or do they result from still
more recent considerations, such as a claimed similarity in the general
'sound' of the Bainunk and Beafada languages?
There are further conclusions to be drawn from the evidence. The lin-
eages residing in places of the BudukDrikama group must in all probability
have been ruling since before the Mandinkization of the Gambia-Kogon
Zone, i.e., since before the mid-fifteenth century at the latest. This confirms
the general picture of southern Senegambian political continuity on the
level of lineage territories (not on the supralineage-temtory level), which
lasted until the Fula conquest of Kabu. the jihad, and the colonization, all in
the nineteenth century.
Whatever future research will make of my conclusions, confirm or re-

fute them, the analysis of the two place name groups has demonstrated
different aspects of work with toponyms. I have tried to reconstruct the orig-
inal place names, made attempts at their interpretation, proposed a relative
date for their genesis, and showed that their spatial distribution permits his-
torical inferences (e.g., about culture change processes). The place names
took us back into a time not covered by written sources.
On the other hand, the frequent recourse to written sources made our de-
pendence on a combination of source types evident, if we wish to gain rich
historical knowledge from place names. For pre-written-evidence periods we
have to make interpolations from the situation outlined in our earliest writ-
ten sources and our knowledge about earlier states of affairs in more or less
adjacent regions, as long as a certain influence of this region on our area of
research is to be expected. For southern Senegambia before 1456, this would
be the Arabic written sources and the oral tradition about Mali, Takrur, and
other savanna states. Sole reliance on place names does not preclude histori-
cal profit, but restricts it to very general and vague statements. Still, in the
PLACE NAMES AS A N HISTORICAL SOURCE 91
absence of any written evidence at all for periods of great time-depth, this
may be rewarding.
Notes
* Based on a lecture given on 14 November 1990 at the Colloqium
Africanum of the Frobenius Institut (Goethe University), Frankfurt a.M. The
author is a geographer currently working on a doctoral thesis about the history
of the ~ a i n u n kand Kasanga.
1 . A different type of proper name rarely utilized for historical
reconstruction is clanpineage-names. While their etymological interpretation is
difficult, their spatial distribution can be detected with little effort (in the field),
and yield results independent of other source types. Thus, the distribution of
present-day Sonko lineages and lineage branches, and especially that of former
royal lineages furnished by Sonkos (map 12). give us clues to the extent of a
political entity once ruled by the faran of Sankola (see below).
2. M. Houis, "Quelques donnkes de toponyrnie ouest-africaine," BIFAN
20B (1958). 562. I know of only two short treatises dealing with African place
narnes in southern Senegambia: L.-V. Thomas, "Onornatologie et toponymie en
pays Diola," Notes Africaines 71(1956): 76-80; and Ant6nio Carreira, "Duas
cartas topogrificas de G r a p Falciio (1894-1897) e a expansio do islamismo no
rio Farirn," Garcia de Orta ll(1963): 189-212. I arn not concerned here with
Senegambian place narnes of European origin.
3 . The interpretation of the past through the movement of groups of
persons. Migrations are to be found at the core of the origines of nearly all
social groups around the world. They are, in some historical treatises, still taken
at face value and are not, as required by critical historiography, seen as images
created to explain political, social, religious, and cultural links between social
groups. ~ h i s - i m a g e rdoes~ not, of course, preclude the actual historicity of
certain migrations. Generally, the link is structured hierarchically, i.e., it is
intended to connect one group to another, which is seen as superior. Thus, the
'inferior' group, through adoption of a genetic relation wlth the group/place
seen as superior, borrows the latter's high reputation. This practice is based on
the constitutive belief in common descent of ethnic and other social groups.
This "descent ideology" is instrumentalized by borrowing prestige from a group
endowed with historical/mythical prestige and ensuing high status by claiming
descent frorn the latter. Rome borrowed Troy's reputation, by creating an origo
of having been founded by descendants of the Trojan Aene,as. And the early
medieval Saxons of north Germany created an origo of being descended from
rnembers of Alexander the Great's army. Similarly, most groups in western West
Africa claim an origin from the highly-reputed empire of Mali, extended in more
recent times by a 'first origin' from the Middle East (Mecca, Egypt, etc.)
reflecting the influence of Islam (seen as culturally superior by Islamic and non-
Islamic peoples alike).
4 . lamlnam: "king" is Bainunk u-nun!,Ralanta a-lanza, Beafada Aanla,
Fula lam-do; "chief with land tenure rights" is Serer/Wolof larn(an), "territorial
ruler/organizerM is Maninka lantoilarnbo; "to rule" is Songhai lanza and Mossi
nun1 (the latter in Maurlce Delafosse, La langue n~andingue(2 vols.: Paris 1955)
2:455). j o n ( k ) l e t c . : "slave" is yon1 in languages of Burkina Faso and
northern Ghana, Togo. and Benin; donko in Asante: jong in Mandinka.
Bambara, Susu/Jalonke, etc.; kome in Sarankole/Soninke; ja:m in Wolof; usamp
in Pajadinka; da:m in Balanta; -jo:k in Papel; ujoenk in Kasanga; usong/uso:g in
Bainunk. manolmaloletc.: east of this area (in Niger and Nigeria) sinkafa is
the general term for "rice;" in Gabon/Congo/Zaire/Angola it is lose. Words in
Sigismund Koelle, Polyglotta Africana (London, 1854).
5 . E. Bertrand-BocandC, "Notes sur la GuinCe Portugaise ou Sknkgambie
rnkridionale," Bulletin de la SociPtk de GPographie de Paris, 1 l(1849): 265-350;
12(1849): 57-93.
6. This may happen either through gradual adoption of a new language by
the indigenous population or by the settlement of speakers of a different
language from a different area. In the former case language replacement is
effected through direct contact with speakers of the new language, who settle
among the indigenous population. A hierarchical relationship of the two cultures
(part of which are the languages) is created once one culture is accepted by
another (recipient) population as being superior. The bearers of the culture of
lower reputation begin to adopt the culture (and language) of a reputation
conceived to be higher.
In West Africa. in the latter case, (peaceful or conquering) settlers usually
come from nearby areas. Only in very specific, rare circumstances did long-
distance relocations of a population take place. One such relocation was the
settlement of Muslirn long-distance traders (and marabouts in their wake) along
the trade routes. Others may have been the armies of major empires. Whether
blacksmiths once migrated over long distances, protected by their special status
(Mandinka riamalo), remains to be investigated.
In many cases of language replacement a combination of factors was at
work. The expansion of Diola and Balanta into Bainunk and Kasanga eth-
nic/culture/language areas was the result of both military conquest and peaceful
change through the presence of Diola- and Balanta-speakers among the Bainunk
and Kasanga respectively. A hierarchy of cultures, in the eyes of the people
concerned, develops under specific conditions. The observance of acculturation
processes may give hints to those historical conditions. These subjective
aspects of social and cultural processes have rarely been tapped by historians.
My present conception of culture change in southern Senegambia received
its initial impulse by Donald Wright's "Beyond Migration and Conquest: Oral
Traditions and Mandinka Ethnicity in Senegambia," HA 12(1985): 335-48.
7 . R . Hachmann, G. Kossack, and H. Kuhn have detected this
"Nordwestblock" by analyzing written sources, findings of archeology,
toponyms (hydronyms and place names), and personal names: Volker zwischen
Gern~anenund Keltm (Neumiinster, 1962).
8 . Classification of West Atlantic: J. David Sapir, "West Atlantic: An
Inventory of the Languages, Their Noun Class Systems and Consonant
Alternation," Current Trends in Linguistics 7(1972), 45-112. Mandinka is a
tonal language; for the classification of Mande languages see W . E. Welmers,
"Niger-Congo, Mande," ibid., 113-40.
9 . A very common prefix in Niger-Congo, shared by Bantu.
1 0 . In Gambian English "compound," in colonial use "yard," denotes the
(generally fenced) group of buildings inhabited by the basic social unit. This
usually is the extended family. Equivalents are French concession, Portuguese
moranqa.
1 1 . Following Luther's bible translation into High German, it was
gradually replaced by New High German. Today it is spoken only in rural areas.
1 2 . West Atlantic words for the previous examples are in Koelle,

Polyglotfa, 32-33.
1 3 . A typical example of Franconian place names from the period of
migration into northeastern France: founder's name plus the etyrna -court or
-ville of Latin origin.
14. Backerenduck: Map, of the Kurlanders published in Otto Heinz
Mattiesen, Die Kolonial- und Uberseepolitik der kurlandischen Herzoge im 17.
und 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1940) 272; Buguba: Maps from ca. 1471 onwards
in: Avelino Teixeira da Mota, Mar, ale'm mar, Esfudos e ensaios de Hisfbria e
Geografia (Lisbon, 1972) 122; Bisanao: Maps of Benincasa atlas; cf. Teixeira da
Mota, ibid., 122; Bajabo: Francisco d e Lemos Coelho, Duas descricdes
seiscentisfas da Guine', ed. Damiio Peres (Lisbon, 1953) 155; Baiab: Bertrand-
BocandC, "Notes," 345.
1 5 . First recorded, to my knowledge, by Lemos Coelho, Duas descricdes,
30, 116. Bequin on a 1688 map by Barbot (Public Record Office, London: M.P.,
1, 493).
1 6 . The earliest recording is: "um b r a ~ oque se chama dos Hereges [a branch
called dos Hereges]"; AndrC Alvares de Almada, Tratado breve dos Rios de Guine'
do Cabo Verde, ed. Ant6nio Brisio (Lisbon, 1964) 57. Alternative etymologies
proposed: J. M. Gray took it for a "corruption of the Portuguese word 'igereja'
meaning 'church', A Hisfory of The Gambia (London, 1940) 11. Paul Hair linked
it with Portuguese herege "heretic" (in an unpublished translation of Alvares de
Almada, 1985), guided by Lernos Coelho's wording 'Aldea dos Herejes,'
possibly itself a misinterpretation (Lemos Coelho, Duas Descricdes, 85). My
interpretation as "crocodile place" seems to be corroborated by the name of a
country BZbaro, which, according to its location and its inhabitants (Bainunk)
(Alvares de Alrnada, Tratado, 57, 64), must be the land Geregia. This may have
been the Mandinka version of jire:ji. Mandinka bamba means "crocodile,"
bamba-la would be "crocodiie home." The latter resembles BZbaro ( I and r being
interchangeable). It was mentioned again in 1665: "The Alcaide of Babarra"
(Public Record Office, London, T701828, 73). but the name bambo also appeared
in "Farrenbambo king of ffonia" (PRO: T70/829, 147, 29 January? 1666). i.e.,
"faran bambo king of Fogni/Fonyi." GeregiaiHerejes and the name of its one-
time superior, Sonkodu/Sangedegu, came to be erroneously reconciled in the
mixed form Sanguirigu or S. Guirigu (which itself probably was the Bainunk
form s a n g e r u g u l s u n g u r u n g u of s a n g e d u g u l s o n k o d u g u ) , before
GeregialJeregesletc. emerged. For want of space, I cannot elaborate here.
1 7 . Adjectives, like nouns, are classified with prefixes. While in
Mandinka, "old man" would be constructed by contracting ke: "man," plus koto
"old," to form ke:koto, in Bainunk both the adjective gi-def, "old," and the noun
u-dige:n, "man," would continue to carry their prefixes and form gidef udige:n,
"old man." Each element, noun and adjective, would continue to be composed of
at least two syllables (prefix and stem), rendering them too unwieldy to form
fluid compounds.
1 8 . Bertrand-BocandC, "Notes," 314, 336.
1 9 . Possibly the NE-Bainunk and Kasanga locative prefix a- is derived from
k a - . Loss of an initial plosive also occurred with the prefix for persons
(singular): gu- is only (occasionally) retained in SW-Bainunk, while it is u- in
other dialects and in Kasanga.
2 0 . Lernos Coelho, Duas Descricdes, 172. The stem somini may be
identified as SamenilSaminlSimini, which recurs as a place name (Samine in
94 STEPHAN BUHNEN
BoudiC, twice in Kasa, Masomine near MansabA). Possibly it derives from the
name of an ancestral shrine known arnong the Konyagi as Sarneni, and arnong
the Kasanga and Ijaher-Bainunk as Sirnini.
2 1 . Another one is the term bolong, "small waterway, marigot." It does not
occur in the core area of Maninka and is an adoption of bulom for "creek, river,
swamp, etc." found in many West Atlantic languages (it even became an
ethnonym for a group populating the mangrove swamps of Sierra Leone).
Certainly both the widespread distribution and the fact, that the geographical
features it describes are absent or rare in continental Mande, have led to its
adoption by Mandinka. The general loan process went in the opposite direction:
West Atlantic languages adopted loanwords from Mandinka, due to the reputation
of Mandinka being the language of the Mali empire (cf. the multitude of Latin
loanwords in Germanic languages).
2 2 . Possibly ga-jaga. The name of the Jahanka-traders' town of Jaga/Jaha(-
ba) on the western fringe of gold-producing Bambuk was first mentioned by
Fernandes, though (erroneously) as the capital of Mali, and by Enciso, Valentim
Fernandes, Description de la CBte Occidentale d'Afrique (Bissau, 1951) 37; Paul
Hair, "Some Minor Sources for Guinea, 1519-1559: Enciso and
Alfonce/Fonteneau," HA, 3(1976) 27. With a locative prefix kalga-, possibly
used in neighboring Silla (where West Atlantic Fula was spoken), we would have
g a j a g a . Jahaba and Gadiaga, both centers of long-distance traders, may thus
share the stem jalzaljaga.
2 3 . Kasan was the major emporium for the rich Gambia salt trade. Boats of
the king of Niumi and of his Niuminka fishermen subjects brought salt from the
Felane salines (south of the lower Salourn) to Kasan, where it was sold to Julas,
who, in turn, traded it into the salt-hungry interior of the continent (:cf. Gomes,
D e la premiere dbcouverte de la Guinbe, ed. ThCodore Monod, R. Mauny, G. Duval
(Bissau, 1959) 43; Lemos Coelho, D u a s descricdes, 110; J.P.L. Durand, A
Voyage to Senegal (London, 1806) 40; Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior
Districts of Africa (London, 1799) 4.
2 4 . Valentim Fernandes (Description, 74, 84, 88) mentioned piqaa, pisoo,
and bissa, an "idol" with these features and an oath formula in the Sierra Leone
area around 1500. The Diola south of river Casarnance and the neighboring
Bainunk call the sacral royal and cornmunity "talking drum" (a slit gong
generically termed bombolong from the river Gambia to Sierra Leone) kabisa and
ebisa respectively.
2 5 . Christian Roche, "Ziguinchor et son pass6 (1645-1920)," Boletim
Cultural d a Guink Portuguesa, 28(1973): 37.
2 6 . Alvares de Almada, Tratado, 63.
2 7 . J. Doneux, Personal cornrnunication, Brussels, 24 October 1990.
2 8 . For meanings of Ternne funco,fungo (historical) and a-funk, a-punkan
(modern) see Paul Hair's unpublished notes (198411986, chapter 14) on Alvares
de Almada. The grain store played a social and sacral role in Sierra Leone
(Alvares de Almada, Trarado, 120; funco) and among the Bainunk of certain
areas, who held meetings of lineage elders under the store and buried their elders
there.
2 9 . Diola mentioned east of Fogni (in Sangedegu) by Lernos Coelho, D u a s
descricdes, 144.
3 0 . Cadamosto, Le navigazioni atlantiche del Veneziano Alvise d a Mosto,
ed. T.G. Leporace (Venice, 1966). 79, 85, 97.
3 1 . "e este d e Guambea que tambem na lingoa dos Mandinguas hB nome

Guabuu," Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esnieraldo de situ obris, ed. Raymond Mauny,
(Bissau, 1956). 64.
32. Published in The Voyages of Cadamosto and Other Docunients on
Western Africa in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century, trans. and ed. by
G.R. Crone (London, 1937), 137.
3 3 . Ganibli also appears as an-obviously ethnonymic-surname in a
Santo Dorningo slave inventory of 1547, together with Bariol (Bainunk) and
Mandinga: Carlos Larrazabal Blanco, Los negros y la esclavitud en Santo
Donlingo (Santo Domingo, 1967), 82.
3 4 . The u behind G may be neglected. This spelling followed a
contemporary fashion; Diogo Gomes, another early voyager, wrote his first
name as "Dioguo."
3 5 . The name of the Ijaher/Ijagar-Bainunk is derived from the name Jagara,
mentioned around 1500 for the king of the Bainunk of Sgo Domingos and his
land (Fernandes, Description, 68, 70). The sarne applies to the land Jarra, called
Jagra in all sources before the mid-nineteenth century. In southern Senegambia,
jagara designated the mernbers of the royal lineage (Alvares de Almada, Tratado,
100). Variants were titles such as "Jagrofa," "duke," and "Gagarafe (n~inistrodo
Estado)" (Ant6nio Dias, "Cren~ase costumes dos indigenas de ilha de Bissau no
sCculo XVIII," Portugal en1 Africa 2(1945): 224; "Reladrio do Feitor da Fazenda
Real e capitgo-mor de Bissau, Jose Ant6nio Pinto, (...), de 1793 a 1797" in
Ant6nio Carreira, Docunientos para a histdria das ilhas de Cabo Verde e 'Rios de
Guink' (se'culos XVII e XMII) (Lisbon, 1983), 166. In northern Senegambia
jagara(f) were members of the council electing the king (and "Capitdes-
Generais:" Alvares de Almada, Tratado, 32); in northeastern Senegambia a slave
in charge of royal land management; and in Kabu (Fula jarga) the village chief.
Other countries narned after their rulers: the Sarankole land Galam (Gadiaga)
seems to be (Fula) ga-lam "land/place of the king." Wuli may have been named
after its royal Wali lineage. Reinhard Wenskus has suggested that the name of
the north Germanic "Teuton" is derived from a word for "king;" "Pytheas und der
Bernsteinhandel" in Untersuchungen zu Handel und Verkehr der vor- und
friihgeschichtlichen Zeit in Mittel- und Nordeuropa, I : Methodische Grundlagen
und Darstellungen zum Handel in vorgeschichtlicher Zeit und in der Antike
(Gottingen, 1985), 101.
3 6 . Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo, 65.
3 7 . Gomes, De'couverte, 39.
3 8 . Attempts to identify Bati with Badibu (Jean Boulkgue, "La SCnCgambie
du milieu du XV sikcle au dCbut du XVII sikcle," unpublished thesis, 33-35,
according to Teixeira da Mota, Mar, ale'm mar, 248) are not convincing. I believe
that Pating was meant: all early Portuguese sources narne rulers by adding their
title to the name of their country. The nasalization of Pating's final i may have
merged with the nasal nl of mansa to form Battiniansa. The latter may thus have
been formed of Bating and niansa. Gomes rnet the Battiniansa on the "right"
bank, travelling upstrearn (Gomes, Dkcouverte, 411, thus on the south bank. The
Portuguese classified the river banks as seen in the direction of travel. Batti is to
be sought further upstream: Cadamosto (Navigazioni, 98) located it "about sixty
or more miles from the river mouth." Cadamosto was inclined to underestimate
distances on the river. He reckoned James Island to be 10 (italian) miles (2.5
port. leagues or 12.5 to 15 km) from the river mouth. In fact, the distance is
about 4 0 km. Cadamosto's "sixty miles" would be equivalent to six times the
distance from the river mouth to James Island ("ten miles"), which would give us
240 km, the distance from the mouth to Kudang or KasanKuntaur on the middle
Gambia, closer to Kabu than to Badibu. Further evidence for Pating is the relative
location of the Battin~ansaupstream of the area ruled by the Farosangoli (ibid.)
who was subject to Mali (Gomes, Dtcouverte, 41). I identify the latter with the
faran of Sankola, whose influence reached the Gambia west of Niani. This faran
ruled over one Frangazick (faran of ga-zick), who styled himself the former's
"nephew" (uncle/nephew a euphemism in the guise of kinship terms still
employed for senior/junior power relationships), from whose dominions Gornes
continued his upstream voyage on the Gambia to Niani, Wuli, and Kantora (ibid.,
34-36). The Frangazick may thus have resided in Niarnina (a Sonko state). The
same identification with the f a r a n of Sankola by S6kCnC-Mody Cissoko, "La
royautC (mansaya) chez les Mandingues occidentaux, d'aprks leurs traditions
orales," BIFAN, 31B (1969). 328. Different identifications: A. Teixeira da Mota,
Mar, altm mar, 191, 246; and George Brooks, Kola Trade and State Building:
Upper Guinea Coast and Senegambia, 15th-17th Centuries, (Working Paper no.
38, African Studies Center, Boston University (Boston, 1980), 16).
3 9 . Balaba, mythical foundress of Kabu's ruling matrilineal Sane lineage is
said to have dwelt in a cave (= autochthonous origin) near Mampating (Bakary
Sidibe, "The Story of Kaabu: Its Extent," paper presented to the Conference on
Manding Studies, London 1972, 9), capital of Pating (other traditions mention
her for Pachana or as a former name of Puropana). This (certainly ahistorical)
idealized ancestral figure was obviously named after the common southern
Senegambian Balaba (or Buloba, Buleba, etc.), a shrine spirit of the ancestors
often imagined as a snake. It served divinatory ends and was frequently with
royal lineages as those of Kasa (Balaba-kisa, my interviews with Salifu Jingali,
Boulornp, 15.12.1987, and Alaji Jingali, Aniak, 18.5.1987, tape-copies at Oral
History Division, Banjul, -ki:s is a Wolof conjuration suffix) and Bissau
(Baloba: Pinto, "Relatbrio," 166). Among the Diola (e.g., for the procurement
of rain): L.-V. Thomas, Les Diola (2 vols.: Dakar, 1959), 2:591; L.-V. Thomas:
"Samba Diatta, 'roi des Blis'," Notes Africaines, no. 115 (July 1967), 87; and
among the southwestern Bainunk it is a fktiche parlant. It also appears in
toponyms: ex-NE-Bainunk villages Kambaleiba (Jasin, Darang, near Jarol), also
Buloba (Manjak, near Canchungo), Rios Balaba and Buloba in Beafada lands.
4 0 . Alvares de Almada, Tratado, 55, 70; AndrC Donelha, DescripTo d a Serra
Leoa e dos rios de Guint do Cabo Verde (1625). ed. A. Teixeira da M o t a English
trans. P.E.H. Hair (Lisbon, 1977), 119.
4 1 . First mentioned in the fourteenth century by al-Bakri for Walata
(Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African history, ed. N. Levtzion and
J.F.P. Hopkins [Cambridge, 19811, 284). A source of ca. 1500 defined the foroes
(farms) as "corregedor ou gouernador delrey" (Fernandes, Description, 42). i.e.,
"magistrate or governor of the king" of Mali.
4 2 . After Mali's collapse and the political emancipation of its former
provinces, which shed their vassal status, the title faran came to mean "emperor,
king over kings" (fist: Alvares de Almada, Tratado, 43). But it also retained its
older sense of "vassal chief," thus coming to bear an ambiguous value. In t h ~ s
latter sense it is found in the numerous southern Senegambian Farankunda place
names, but also in Jlfarong (Kiang) as well as in Lemos Coelho's Cafarrio (*ka-
faran) (Duas descri~des,30, 156), which is probably Iarang, a former capital of a
northern Balanta state (Bertrand-BocandC, "Notes," 345: J a r a n g ) . Gornes'
Frangazick (*faran-gasik, see above) was also such a lesser ruler.
P L A C E N A M E S A S AN H I S T O R I C A L S O U R C E 97
4 3 . Birasu was the successor to its eastern neighbor Sankola as a regional

power. The faran of Birasu was f i s t mentioned by Femandes (Description, 69).
Access to trade with the Portuguese (ibid.: horses) on the upper Rio Cacheu may
have added rnornentum to its rise.
4 4 . The shift of the stem's initial consonant according to grammatical
context; cf. Kasanga aca:r, "knife," gasax, "knives."
4 5 . Lemos Coelho, Duas descri~des,36, 154.
4 6 . Cf. e l u p , "[mud] house." This etymology is corroborated by the
Bainunk parallel case bilitlgulid, "house, compound, wall." These words are
rnainly used in areas with a tradition of mud structures (in the southwest, close to
the Diola with equal building techniques). The latter stem recurs in Gujaher-
Bainunk u-lod, "potter" (who works with clay/mud).
4 7 . Adam Jones used ma- (for liquids) prefixed hydronyms to reconstruct
the distribution of Mel-speakers in Sierra Leone before the expansion of Mande
languages: Jones, "Who were the Vai," JAH 22(1981), 169-70.
4 8 . In the course of a series of such inventories, the U.S. Ministry of the
Interior published: Senegal. Official Standard Names (Washington, D.C., 1965);
Portuguese Guinea. Official Standard Names (Washington, D.C., 1968); Gambia.
Official Standard Names (Washington, D.C., 1968).
4 9 . Geregia was first mentioned by Alvares de Almada, Tratado, 57, as
Hereges, and Conjongolong was mentioned only by Bertrand-BocandC, "Notes,"
314, 336.
5 0 . Ibid., 63.
5 1 . Among other sources: J.A. Le Brasseur, "DCtails historiques e t
politiques, mCmoire inCdit (1778)," ed. Charles Becker and Victor Martin,
BIFAN, 39B (1977), 105; e Public Record Office (London): T 7013, 41; Debut,
29 Jan. 1764; a Map, Bibliothkque Nationale (Paris), portefeuille 11 1, division
2, pikce 37: "C8te d'Afrique, (...), par Levant, 1776."
5 2 . I define state as the territorial, institutionalized, and effective rule of
one or more lineage(s) over members of others. This wide definition seems suited
to southern Senegambian conditions. It lacks criteria otherwise agreed on in
political sciences, such as a minimum degree of centralization of political
power, the existence of a social stratum separated from production to serve for
administration, or even script, and monumental architecture.
5 3 . Further place names occurring in the former and present areas of the
Bainunk, Kasanga, and Beafada, partly also in Kabu, are: Many
BisariiBisaraiBisora (possibly Tobor/Niamone-Bainunk and Fula s a : r ,
"settlement"), Gambisara, Mambisara. PayinkuiPaiunco (Pachana capital, in
Gubisseco, old name of Diambati in Sonkodu) and possibly Bayanka (Geregia)
and Badiongo (Kasa). Bugampor (ex-Ijaher-Bainunk village near S5o Domingos,
and in Guinala). A stem yabljabicab in Baiab/Bajabo/Faja (capital of ex-SE-
Kasa, now Balanta), Patiabor (capital of Sama, co-capital of BoudiC), Baiaba
(Sandu province of Wuli), and possibly a rr~arigot Badiapour (off the lower
Casamance). Stem -ai (Kai-ai with prefix ka- in Niani, "Guiai" with prefix ji- in
Guinala, according to Donelha, Descri~cio,174, a land Pai Ai east of Corubal, a
village Paiaicunda in Mana). Simbor (capital of Sama, in Woye/Oio, in Bugafara
east of Kasa, in Jimara). GuidellGuidaliiTyidPli (south of Ziguinchor, Forrei, S-
Tumana, Nyampaio). Su(m)bundu (Jarra, Sonkodu, Pakao, Sankola).
5 4 . Alvares de Almada, Tratado, 70; Donelha, Descriqgo, 167; Alonzo de
Sandoval, Naturale~a,policia sagrada y profana, costumbres, ritos, disciplina y
catecismo evangelico de todos 10s Etlliopes (Seville, 1627), 6.
STEPHAN B UHNEN
5 5 . It formed the toponyms of, among numerous others, the island of

Bulama off QuinaraIGuinala and the ethnonym Bulom (Sierra Leone), and was
borrowed by Mandinka (bolong, "marigot") and by Portuguese Creole (bolanha,
"rice paddy"). Cognate of the stem lorn is in northern Guinea-Bissau, ra:m (cf.
Bainunk gu-raw, gu-rang and Kasanga a-dun "marigot"), forming the ethnonym
B(u)rame (formerly for the Manjak/Papel/Mankanya, today restricted to
Mankanya) and the name of the Bayot-Diola mangrove village Arame. The shifts
from voiced to unvoiced consonants are also found in the Moyenne and Haute
Casamance and in northeastern Guinea-Bissau: prefix ba- > p a - , ji- > ci-. See
Pating, Pakao (Kombo: Bakau), Mampalago, TyidCli (S-Bainunk Guide1 = jidel),
Tiarap, TiCti.
5 6 . Alvares de Almada, Tratado, 95; and Donelha, Descripio, 159.
5 7 . My interview of 24 January 1987 (copy of tape at Oral History
Division, Banjul).
5 8 . Mattiesen, ~ b e r s e e ~ o l i t i k272.
,
5 9 . At least six Manduars are known: in Kombo, Kiang, Geregia,
JamelSouth-Fogni (2). and Pakao (royal residence). The stem war, "stone," is
Bainunk (also in other West Atlantic languages). Possibly it denotes a sacral
stone (at the core of many shrines). Manduar might be named after the shrine
itself, or after its guardian. Analogous place names among the Diola: Elinkin
(linkin, "stone"). In Fulup-Diola elinkin denotes a royal shrine, as does plak,
"stone," in Manjak. Could Manduar be the "place of a royal stone shrine guardian
(=king)?" At the end of the sixteenth century, the king of Fogni was mentioned
as "a far& [=faran] called Jaroale" (Alvares de Almada, Tratado, 57) and as Faram
Jariale, rei de Tunhi or Fonlti (letter of 5 August 1696, in Christian0 JosC de
Senna Barcellos, Subsidios para a hisldria de Cabo Verde e GuinP (Lisbon, 1899-
1913), 9: 141; and Arquivo Hist6rico Ultramarino, Lisbon: Papeis avulsos, 249,
9 November 1697). Because of its recurrence after more than a century "Jaroale"
may have been a title rather than a name, possibly derived from *;a-ro-wal.
Prefix ja- in Senegambian languages could denote functions/offices (see jagaraf
above, jabundanes=players of an instrument in Guinala: Alvares d e Almada,
Tratado, 98). Prefix ralro- is occasionally used in Bainunk to denote rituals (e.g.
ran-kub "male initiation"). *jarowal may have been the "person in charge of the
stone ritual," in the case of a royal stone shrine, the king. The stem w a r ,
"stone," recurs in r o l l o - ~ ' a l l b a l ,a component found in place names in the
region: Tankroal in Kiang (in historical sources, Tankoroval etc.) and on the
upper Rio Cacheu (derived from *tan-ka-ro-wal?), in Corubal/Gulubali (a Beafada-
land) with prefix ka-lko-, in "Durubali" (near Pirada-Kansala), and possibly in
the Beafada clan name Malobal.
6 0 . Bertrand-BocandC, "Notes," 62.
6 1 . David M. Schaffer, "Pakao-A Study of Social Process Among a
Mandingo People of the Senegambia," (Ph.D., Oxford, 1976), 177.
6 2 . Houis, "Quelques donnCes," 572.
6 3 . Personal cornrnunication, 9 April 1988.
6 4 . Lemos Coelho, D u a s d e s r r i ~ d e s , 31, 142, mentions only this
settlement for Portuguese trading on the upper Casarnance. The identity of
BoudiCmar with Coelho's BujP is confimled by Bertrand-BocandC, "Notes." 312.
who wrote of the former as having formerly been the major Portuguese factory on
the upper Casarnance.
6 5 . Conceivable parallels in other West Atlantic languages: Wolof dak,
Bijago ande:gen, Landuma da:di (words in Koelle, Polyglotta).
6 6 . The name of a Diola village in Buluf, Diatok (ja-tok),seems to confirm

this interpretation. The original Bainunk inhabitants of Diatok are reputed to
have settled at the quarter called Birko. As we shall see below, this place name
fits nicely into the general pattern of the vast majority of such place names
belonging to seats of kings and royal lineages. In Diatok we possibly find a
royal residence (Birko) and a place of meetings presided by the king (Diatok).
Admittedly, a different (Diola) etymology also makes sense: jatok, "river." The
name of a kingdom JattuCo on a Kurland map (Mattiesen, ~ b e r s e e p o l i t i k272).
,
seemingly identical with FogniPonyi, might also be interpreted as ja-tuk-o.
6 7 . A. Teixeira da Mota's introduction to Donelha, Descri~cio,3 5.
6 8 . Alvares de Almada, Tratado, 70, 95; Donelha, Descripio, 167.
7 0 . Richard Jobson, The Golden Trade (London, 1625), 237-38. While -
way may have been the frequent first name Wali, Mandinka sunla is the title of
the head of that branch of the royal lineage which furnishes the successor to the
throne, and hence it is the title of the successor. Thus Jobson may have been
wrong in terming Sunlaway a king, although he certainly was the local political
authority, and his lineage at Bereck was royal.
7 1 . Bertrand-BocandC, "Notes," 314, 336.
7 2 . Ibid., 62.
7 3 . Oral History Division, Banjul, Tape 130A: Interview with Ibrahirna
Mane at Brikama Nding (Fuladu), The Gambia, probably 3 March 1972, p. 7 of
transcription.
7 5 . Reputed to have been founded, together with Fanka (a later capital), by
the 'first' ruler of Sankola, Mansa Bourama Sonko, interview with El'haji Bakari
Sonko, Sankola-Berekolong, in SCkCnC-Mody Cissoko and Kaoussou Sambou,
Recueil des traditions orales des Mandingues de Gambie et de Casamance
(Niamey, 1974), 252.
7 6 . Winifred Galloway, "A Working Map of Kaabu," unpublished paper
presented at the Colloque International sur les traditions orales du Gabou, Dakar,
19-24 May 1980, p. 1.
7 7 . Alvares de Almada, Tratado, 1W.
7 9 . InquPrito Etnogrbfico, ed. A. Teixeira da Mota (Bissau, 1947), 113.
8 0 . Possibly two villages by the name of Bakendikmakarindik, both
belonging to Niumi's 'first' (oral tradition) royal lineage (Jame), must be added
to the list. One was mentioned as Backerrenduck on a map of the 1650s
(Mattiesen, ~ b e r s e e p o l i t i k ,272). Its original name may, perhaps, b e
reconstructed as *ba-ka-ran-duk (see above). If this is correct we would be left
with another duk stem name. Its affiliation with the Buduk group of place names
is also hinted by the alternative name Bourco of its ruling Jame lineage in
traditions collected in the 1770s (Le Brasseur, "DCtails historiques," 113-14),
possibly after their residence. The identity of Jame and Bourco follows from Le
Brasseur's listing of kings with the surnames Bourco, Sonko, and Mane. Today
the Jame, Sonko, and Mane are named as royal lineages. the Jame being
considered the original, or 'first' one. Burko survives as a rare clan name north
of Niumi (in Joal and on the les du Saloum; Charles Becker and V. Martin, "Les
familles paternelles sereer," BlFAN 44B (1982): 388), and as the clan name of
persons figuring in a tradition about Niumi's neighbor Jokadu (Donald Wright,
Oral Traditions From the Gambia (Athens, 1979), 1:lOl).
8 1. Between the lower courses of the Casamance and the Rio Cacheu, plus
narrow coastal stretches north of the former (Bliss, Karone) and south of the
latter (Bote).
8 2 . Presumed to be between the Rio Mansua and the north bank of the Rio
Geba estuary.
8 3 . Attested by a village Poudoukou and a faro (drainage gully, swamp)
Borouko (off the Lingourou tributary to the Kogon), both in GuinC-Conakry.
Was this area part of Beafada territory, or did its Landuma inhabitants adopt the
name from the neighboring Beafada?
8 4 . T h i s conclusion is corroborated by other place names:
DiaroumCIJarume is an alternative capital of the former Bainunk kingdom of
Jasin (Mane lineage), a former royal compound in ex-Bainunk Fogni (see
above), as Jarumai on Sofanyama Bolong in Wuropana/Niamina (early colonial
maps), as Iarom in Woye, and as Jerume in Niani. The Joreng place names also
delineate the former Bainunk territory.
8 5 . Maps of the 1460s and 1470s depict a "terra farsangalli" between the
mouths of these rivers and north of the Geba (cf. Teixeira da Mota, Mar, ale'm
mar, 122). The regional power of the Farosangoli is attested by his title faran,
the extent of his rule as shown on the maps, and by Gomes' and Cadamosto's
writings about the "great prince" and "the principal lord" of the lands on the
Gambia respectively (Gomes, De'couverte, 34; Cadamosto, Navigazioni, 97).
8 6 . No proof available for this assumption. Gomes' and Cadamosto's use
of the Mandinka titles mansa and faran for the rulers of Niumi, Niani, Wuli,
Pating, and Sankola may be due to Mandinka interpreters, to Mandinka as the
lingua franca, or to the loanword nature of the titles. See Gomes, Dkcouverte, 35-
37; Cadarnosto, Navigazioni, 97, 98, 104, 109.
8 7 . Possibly as a result of the late fifteenth century Fula military campaign
through southern Senegambia (details and dating: Avelino Teixeira da Mota, "Un
document nouveau pour l'histoire des Peuls au SCnCgal pendant les XV6me et
XVIkme si&cles," Boletim Cultural da Guine' Portuguesa 24[1969]: 781-860).
8 8 . Selected evidence for state structures in Kabu before its (Mandinka)
culture change: continuity of autochthonous clan names of ruling lineages (Sane,
Mane), political structure (matrilineality of royal lineage/clan versus Mali's
patrilineality), the term fianco for members of the royal lineagelclan (in the form
naco also among the non-mandingized Manjak, but unknown in Mali).
8 9 . Kabu examples: Mampating (prefixes m a - and b a l p a - ) , Payinku,
Mankorsi.
9 0 . I infer this from dominant matrilineal elements in the kinship system
both within Kabu's ruling lineagelclan and among the Pajadinka, and from
Kabu's location between the closely-related languages Beafada and Pajadinka.
9 1 . Go~nes,De'couverte, 34; Cadamosto, Navigazioni, 97.
9 2 . Lemos Coelho, Duas descri~des,14, 37, 114-15. In the seventeenth
century this land incorporated Geregia. The Europeans of the seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries, who had no cornrnunication with core Sangedegu in
the interior (on Soungrougrou river), called Geregia Sangedegu.
93. From certain place names, social features and politico-sacral bonds
between the two banks of the upper Rio Cacheu (names of royal lineages, and
Bertrand-BocandC, "Notes," 347-48). the ethnonym TxiIBetxi (ca beca:) of the
Balanta on both banks of the Rio Cacheu (and its possible derivation from
'Kasa'), and other evidence I assume a former Kasanga identity of the Balantas of
Woye. And in the neighboring area of Mansabi many place names prefixed
ma(n)- arc encountered (Morks, Mansomine near Mansabi, Mambonco, etc.).

Although also present in the northern Bainunk area, it is particularly frequent in
the former northern territories of the Beafada.

Place Names As An Historical Source

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Place Names As An Historical Source

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Place Names as an Historical Source: An Introduction with Examples from

Southern Senegambia and Germany

History in Africa, Vol. 19. (1992), pp. 45-101.

History in Africa is currently published by African Studies Association.

INTRODUCTION WITH EXAMPLES FROM

SOUTHERN SENEGAMBIA AND GERMANY*

Written sources for the history of sub-Saharan Africa (with the

Hislory in Africa 19 (1992): 45-101

of place name research in Europe. Thus, African toponymic research does

Southern Senegambia in History

'Ethnic Core rea as' of the Empires

Ghana (Soninke), Susu (SusuIJalonke), and Mali

vertical hachure: presumed former area of Bainunk and Kasanga

Before the expansion of Mandinka influence and ethnic identity into

kingdoms with a hierarchy of kings. I do not subscribe to the widespread

more royal lineage(s).

Languages in the Areas Concerned

North, Central, and South Branch of West Africa Group of Languages

though, this might provoke more competent scholars to criticize my

Manjak/Papel/Mankanya, Balanta), Nalumorth-Baga, (South-)Baga, Bulom.

Presumed Location of West Atlantic Languages

Before the Expansion of Mandinka, SW-Mande

Languages, Susu, Fula, Balanta, Diola, etc.

What is further needed is a basic knowledge of the laws of language

The Etymology of Place Names

hem "home," which closely resembles the Anglo-Saxon ham (as in

Nature names in Germany:

Bainunk nature names in southern Senegambia:

Places named after their inhabitants in Germany:

German Monch, "monk"

Possibly some of the southern Senegambian place names with a plural

sanfo,"upper;" -ba, "big;" -kofo,"old;" -kuta, "new;" Manga-

- 1a - concentration high concentration

Several Sindina in Kasa and Tandina in Fogni: "well, source"

Folk or Popular Etymology

Spatial Distribution of Place Names

communities may theoretically leave traces in place names. Thus place

The Chronological Stratification of Place Names

bear testimony to villages founded by Diola amid older (ex-Bainunk) vil-

Flurnamen, Regional Names, Hydronyms, Ethnonyms

Flurnamen designate areas outside settlements: fields, meadows, forests,

that of place names. In Africa no Flurnamen are documented in historical

The early versions Cambra, Gambra, G ~ m b uGuabuu , ~ ~ and Guambea3

one of whom was the Pating-mansa (Battimansa). Hence if Gomes and

the components connected by the genitival affix ko. In everyday language

Map 6: Toponyms with prefix na-

Place Name Inventories

Two Place Name Groups in Southern Senegambia:

The following examples demonstrate different aspects of place name re-

late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.54Both seem to indicate an

Thus it seems that Bnkama is a "Brika" compounded with a -masuffix.

Sankola: Brikama, earliest capital according to oral t r a d i t i ~ n . ~ ~

PLACE NAMES AS AN HISTORICAL SOURCE

Badora: Bricama was the capital (royal lineage Sanyang, later

Piling assumption upon assumption, one might venture that a 'pre-

Sonko as Royal Lineage

(and Manjang: Mainly Birasu)

Oral tradition of the Kasanga and the (southern) Ijaher-Bainunk often

Whatever future research will make of my conclusions, confirm or re-

1 2 . West Atlantic words for the previous examples are in Koelle,

3 1 . "e este d e Guambea que tambem na lingoa dos Mandinguas hB nome

4 3 . Birasu was the successor to its eastern neighbor Sankola as a regional

5 5 . It formed the toponyms of, among numerous others, the island of