Alternate Names of Cape Town

I will look if Khoikhoi named this place --> Bingo !!! The original name given to the mountain by the first Khoi inhabitants was Hoeri 'kwaggo ("sea mountain").

And maybe British settlers Anglicize it to "Hoary Crag" or something similar?

Or, alternatively, someone could find out the meaning of the native name and translate it? Seamont?
 
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With more Huguenot settlers and not all of them scattered in the countryside as wine-growers, Bonne-Espérance.
If later falling under British domination (my knowledge of Dutch is limited to 'thank you' dank u, and only because it sounds a lot like French for 'in the @$$'':D):
- name unchanged but accent dropped and hyphen, as in Baton Rouge: Bonne Esperance;
- half translated as in New Orleans: Bonn(e) Hope;
- partly substituted with an English word similarly sounding, as in L'Anse aux Meadows: Bonnesper Range;
- half substituted half translated: Bone Hope.
 
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If it was colonized by the Portuguese I'd suggest "Boa Esperança" (Good Hope, as the Portuguese king named it) or even "Vasco da Gama" (to celebrate the first navigator that crossed it).

Second captain, actually. The first was Bartolomeu Dias.

Good Hope Town or any variant thereof seems the easiest. Hopeville, Hopetown, Hopeburg... Hope is a very feel-good word and would catch on well for a settlement's name.

Or indeed let's have it based in its equivalent in Portuguese, French or Dutch...
 
Name it for the monarch? (Who was it when the Brits arrived, George II?)

Or for the ship that first arrived? (Or her captain.)
 
Does anybody here know why it wasn't? You'd think that with their main trade-routes going around the Cape, and them getting there before the Dutch, planting a settlement in that area would have been an obvious idea... No?
:confused:

They didn't want Stirling writing any books about super-Nazi versions of them five hundred years later.
 
Does anybody here know why it wasn't? You'd think that with their main trade-routes going around the Cape, and them getting there before the Dutch, planting a settlement in that area would have been an obvious idea... No?
:confused:

Didnt they already had some islands around and even Angola and Mozambique? For quite some time the Dutch were limited to only the Cape.
 
Didnt they already had some islands around and even Angola and Mozambique? For quite some time the Dutch were limited to only the Cape.
Yes, but the Cape is about halfway between Angola and Mozambique which would make it potentially a useful way-station along that route, especially considering the storms that were well-known in the waters slightly further to its east... and the local climate is more 'European' than the climates of either of those other areas, too, which I'd have expected to encourage settlement...
 
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It was first colonized by the Dutch, but was taken by the British during the Boer Wars.

It wasn't. It was taken by the British twice, first in 1795 and for the second time in 1806 (I think). It had nothing to do with the Boer Wars but rather spillover from the Napoleonic Wars.
 
Second captain, actually. The first was Bartolomeu Dias.

Good Hope Town or any variant thereof seems the easiest. Hopeville, Hopetown, Hopeburg... Hope is a very feel-good word and would catch on well for a settlement's name.

Or indeed let's have it based in its equivalent in Portuguese, French or Dutch...

Using Google gives you:
Portuguese: Esperamos Cidade, Cidade da Esperança, Espero Cidade
French: Espérerville, Ville de l'Espoir
Dutch: Hoopstad

Williamandmaryburg
:D
 
The Dutch apparently originally called Cape Town, De Kaap.

It is also called iKapa in Xhosa.

Something to do with Simon van der Stel is also a possibility, he was governor of the Cape for 20 years in the 18th century.

Stellenbosch, the second oldest European settlement in South Africa is named after him, as is Simonstown, just outside Cape Town. In Afrikaans Simonstown is called Simonstad (Simon's City) so that is also a possibility.
 
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