Farm- und Plantagennamen im kolonialen Usambara

The Usambara Mountains in the north-east of present-day Tanzania became one of the preferred destinations for the establishment of farms during the German colonial period. In the case of colonial settlement, the change in ownership can be linguistically marked by the claiming of the droit de nommer. This paper examines an inventory of 102 German-owned farms with regard to naming practices. It can be shown that slightly more than one-fifth of the farms are referred to with German names. Most of these names mark the changed ownership not only by the exonymous form but also by the choice of modifier. For the slightly less than eighty percent of farms and plantations without exonymous names, two cases can be distinguished: if these farms are listed under the exonymous name of a larger place, they have no name of their own, but one may have to refer to them with phrases such as "the plantation of Mr. X in (the vicinity of) Y". In contrast, farms and plantations that are the only activity in a place tend to be increasingly identified with the endonymous name of the place.