page_title: San people
section_title: Names
hierarchical_section_title: San people / Names
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of a bushman. Alfred Duggan-Cronin. South Africa, early 20th century. The picture is housed in the Wellcome Collection and is on display. The original black&amp;white picture is ©Wellcome Trust.
context_page_description: The San peoples, also known as the Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kx'a-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer groups that are the first nations of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa. In 2017, Botswana was home to approximately 63,500 San people, which is roughly 2.8% of the country's population, making it the country with the highest population of San people.
context_section_description: The endonyms used by San themselves refer to their individual nations, including
  the ǃKung (ǃXuun) (subdivisions ǂKxʼaoǁʼae (Auen), Juǀʼhoan, etc.)
  the Tuu (subdivisions ǀXam, Nusan (Nǀu), ǂKhomani, etc.)
  and Tshu–Khwe groups such as the Khwe (Khoi, Kxoe), Haiǁom, Naro, Tsoa, Gǁana (Gana) and Gǀui (ǀGwi). 
  Representatives of San peoples in 2003 stated their preference of the use of such individual group names where possible over the use of the collective term San.
  Both designations "Bushmen" and "San" are exonyms in origin, but San had been widely adopted as an endonym by the late 1990s. "San" originates as a Khoekhoe appellation used by pastoralists to refer to foragers, from a root saa "picking up from the ground" + plural -n in the Haiǁom dialect.
  The term Bushmen, from 17th-century Dutch Bosjesmans, is still widely used by others and to self-identify, but in some instances the term has also been described as pejorative.
  Adoption of the Khoekhoe term San in Western anthropology dates to the 1970s, and this remains the standard term in English-language ethnographic literature, although some authors have later switched back to Bushmen. 
  The compound Khoisan, used to refer to the pastoralist Khoi and the foraging San collectively, was coined by Leonhard Schulze in the 1920s and popularised by Isaac Schapera in 1930, and anthropological use of San was detached from the compound Khoisan,
  as it has been reported that the exonym San is perceived as a pejorative in parts of the central Kalahari. By the late 1990s, the term San was in general use by the people themselves. 
  The adoption of the term was preceded by a number of meetings held in the 1990s where delegates debated on the adoption of a collective term. These meetings included the Common Access to Development Conference organised by the Government of Botswana held in Gaborone in 1993, the 1996 inaugural Annual General Meeting of the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) held in Namibia, and a 1997 conference in Cape Town on "Khoisan Identities and Cultural Heritage" organised by the University of the Western Cape. 
  The term San is now standard in South African, and used officially in the blazon of the national coat-of-arms. The "South African San Council" representing San communities in South Africa was established as part of WIMSA in 2001. 
  "Bushmen" is now considered derogatory by many South Africans, to the point where, in 2008, use of boesman (the modern Afrikaans equivalent of "Bushman") in the Die Burger newspaper was brought before the Equality Court, which however ruled that the mere use of the term cannot be taken as derogatory, after the San Council had testified that it had no objection to its use in a positive context.
  The term Basarwa (singular Mosarwa) is used for the San collectively in Botswana. 
  The term is a Bantu (Tswana) word meaning "those who do not rear cattle". Use of the mo/ba- noun class indicates "people who are accepted", as opposed to the use of Masarwa, an older variant which is now considered offensive.
  In Angola they are sometimes referred to as mucancalas, or bosquímanos (a Portuguese adaptation of the Dutch term for "Bushmen"). 
  The terms Amasili and Batwa are sometimes used for them in Zimbabwe.
  The San are also referred to as Batwa by Xhosa people and Baroa by Sotho people. 
  The Bantu term Batwa refers to any foraging tribesmen and as such overlaps with the terminology used for the "Pygmoid" Southern Twa of South-Central Africa.
caption: Portrait of a bushman. Alfred Duggan-Cronin. South Africa, early 20th century. The Wellcome Collection, London
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