'Vorland-Nyika and Kumbamulde'. The handling of indigenous place names in Oskar Baumann’s Usambara writings

This paper analyses two volumes in which the Austrian geographer Oskar Baumann (1864–1899) describes his expeditions to Usambara. Baumann’s recordings are particularly interesting because he reached the area before the colonization of this north-eastern part of Deutsch-Ostafrika began. The paper explores how indigenous place names are integrated into colonial discourse with a special focus on classifiers. It will be shown that the data gathered is in line with German colonial toponymy since most place names preserve their indigenous form whereas the smaller group of place names comprising indigenous and German elements are generally coined according to prototypical patterns.