Place Names in Africa

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Introduction: Place Names in Africa: Colonial Urban Legacies, Entangled Histories

   • Liora Bigon

   Pages 1-25

3. Sarah’s Globe and the (Un-)naming of Mobile Space

   • Michel Ben Arrous

   Pages 27-36

4. Bagamoyo: Inquiry into an East African Place Name

   • Walter T. Brown

   Pages 37-44

5. ‘The Trees Are Yours’: Nature, Toponymy and Politics in the Interpretation of Cultural Landscapes in Lusaka and Zanzibar

   • Garth Myers

   Pages 45-57

6. Transnational Aspects in the History of Lagos: Place Names and Built Forms

   • Liora Bigon, Robert Home

   Pages 59-78

7. From ‘Avenue de France’ to ‘Boulevard Hassan II’: Toponymic Inscription and the Construction of Nationhood in Fes, Morocco

   • Samira Hassa

   Pages 79-91

8. The Colonial Toponymic Model in the Capital Cities of French West Africa

   • Hélène d’Almeida-Topor

   Pages 93-103

9. A Toponymy of Segregation: The ‘Neutral Zones’ of Dakar, Dar es Salaam and Kinshasa

   • Luce Beeckmans

   Pages 105-121

10. Generic Terminology in Colonial Urban Contexts: Garden Cities Between Dakar and Tel Aviv

    • Liora Bigon, Yossi Katz

    Pages 123-141

11. Letters, Words, Worlds: the Naming of Soweto

    • Gordon H. Pirie

    Pages 143-157

12. South African Identity as Reflected by its Toponymic Tapestry

    • Barbara Meiring

    Pages 159-175

13. M(g)r. De Hemptin(n)e, I Presume? Transforming Local Memory Through Toponymy in Colonial/Post-Colonial Lubumbashi, DR Congo

    • Johan Lagae, Sofie Boonen, Donatien Dia Mwembu Dibwe

    Pages 177-194

14. Formal and Informal Toponymic Inscriptions in Maputo: Towards Socio-Linguistics and Anthropology of Street Naming

    • César Cumbe

    Pages 195-205

15. Glocal Naming and Shaming: Toponymic (Inter-)National Relations on Lagos and New York Streets

    • Wale Adebanwi

    Pages 207-220

16. Afterword

    • Ambe Njoh, Liora Bigon

    Pages 221-223

17. Back Matter

    Pages 225-229

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This volume examines the discursive relations between indigenous, colonial and post-colonial legacies of place-naming in Africa in terms of the production of urban space and place. It is conducted by tracing and analysing place-naming processes, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa during colonial times (British, French, Belgian, Portuguese), with a considerable attention to both the pre-colonial and post-colonial situations.

By combining in-depth area studies research – some of the contributions are of ethnographic quality – with colonial history, planning history and geography, the authors intend to show that culture matters in research on place names. 
This volume goes beyond the recent understanding obtained in critical studies of nomenclature, normally based on lists of official names, that place naming reflects the power of political regimes, nationalism, and ideology.

• Colonial Planning History
• Cultural Geography
• Indigineous and Colonial Naming Legacies
• Toponymy in Africa
• Urbanisation in Africa
• urban geography and urbanism

• The Institute of Western Cultures, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

  Liora Bigon

After finishing her PhD studies in Architecture at the University of Manchester, Liora Bigon is an urban historian, a Research Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a lecturer in Holon Institute of Technology. Apart from publications in a variety of academic journals on the subject of indigenous and colonial planning cultures in sub-Saharan Africa, she has written and edited several books in this area. The latter project, co-edited together with Prof. Yossi Katz, deals with the transnational dimensions of the garden city model in colonial Africa and Mandate Palestine, was published in March 2014 by Manchester University Press.

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