The Khoikhoi ("men of men") or Khoi are a division of the Khoisan ethnic group of south-western Africa, closely related to the Bushmen (San). They have lived in this area for about 30,000 years.
They were once known to Europeans as the Hottentots, a name that is now considered derogatory (it means "stutterer" in Dutch (although the Dutch use the word "stotteraar" more), describing the clicking sounds used in the Khoisan languages). The word lives on, however, in the names of several African animal and plant species, such as the Hottentot Fig or Carpobrotus Fig, Carpobrotus edulis.
Fritsch divides the Hottentots into three bodies; the Cape Hottentots, from the Cape peninsula eastward to Kaffraria, the Koranna, chiefly on the right bank of the Orange river, but also found on the Harts and the Vaal, and the Namaqua in the western portion of South Africa.
The easiest Hottentot clicks, the dental and cerebral, have been adopted by the Kaffirs; and it is a striking circumstance, in evidence of the past Hottentot influence upon the Kaffir languages, that the clicking decreases amongst these tribes almost in proportion to their distance from the former Hottentot domain.
These Hottentot tales generally have much of the character of fables; some are in many points identical with northern nursery tales, and suggestive of European origin or of contact with the white man; but the majority bear evidence of being true native products.
Hottentots is built almost exclusively on sex-denoting suffixes, and it is the most complete of this small group of languages.
Hottentots is a congeries of superstitious observances, of which travellers and folklorists have never been able to obtain a full explanation from the natives.
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