(M227) Among the Zulus no man will mention the name of the chief of his tribe or the names of the progenitors of the chief, so far as he can remember them; nor will he utter common words which coincide with or merely resemble in sound tabooed names. “As, for instance, the Zungu tribe say _mata_ for _manzi_ (water), and _inkosta_ for _tshanti_ (grass), and _embigatdu_ for _umkondo_ (assegai), and _inyatugo_ for _enhlela_ (path), because their present chief is Umfan-o inhlela, his father was Manzini, his grandfather Imkondo, and one before him Tshani.” In the tribe of the Dwandwes there was a chief called Langa, which means the sun; hence the name of the sun was changed from _langa_ to _gala_, and so remains to this day, though Langa died more than a hundred years ago. Once more, in the Xnumayo tribe the word meaning “to herd cattle” was changed from _alusa_ or _ayusa_ to _kagesa_, because u-Mayusi was the name of the chief. Besides these taboos, which were observed by each tribe separately, all the Zulu tribes united in tabooing the name of the king who reigned over the whole nation. Hence, for example, when Panda was king of Zululand, the word for “a root of a tree,” which is _impando_, was changed to _nxabo_. Again, the word for “lies” or “slander” was altered from _amacebo_ to _amakwata_, because _amacebo_ contains a syllable of the name of the famous King Cetchwayo. These substitutions are not, however, carried so far by the men as by the women, who omit every sound even remotely resembling one that occurs in a tabooed name. At the king’s kraal, indeed, it is sometimes difficult to understand the speech of the royal wives, as they treat in this fashion the names not only of the king and his forefathers, but even of his and their brothers back for generations. When to these tribal and national taboos we add those family taboos on the names of connexions by marriage which have been already described,(1418) we can easily understand how it comes about that in Zululand every tribe has words peculiar to itself, and that the women have a considerable vocabulary of their own. Members, too, of one family may be debarred from using words employed by those of another. The women of one kraal, for instance, may call a hyaena by its ordinary name; those of the next may use the common substitute; while in a third the substitute may also be unlawful and another term may have to be invented to supply its place. Hence the Zulu language at the present day almost presents the appearance of being a double one; indeed, for multitudes of things it possesses three or four synonyms, which through the blending of tribes are known all over Zululand.(1419)