The Documentation of Place Names in an Endangered Language Environment: A Case Study of the !Xoon in Southern Omaheke, Namibia

The West !Xoon variety of the Taa language complex is spoken by a small community of former hunter-gatherers in southeastern Namibia whose presence is virtually invisible on official topographical maps. This article presents the results of the documentation of !Xoon place names and describes their semantic sources and grammatical constructions. It further discusses how the high number of alternative names for the same place might be related to the Taa cognitive model of the southern Kalahari landscape, language endangerment and loss, general flexibility in !Xoon naming practices, and the complex historical layers of language contact.