Shifting economic power and a shifting onomastic landscape in post-1994 South Africa

Abstract

Before the negotiated political settlement in the early 1990s that eventually culminated in the first fully democratic elections held in South Africa in 1994, the economic power in South Africa (and by implication also the ‘naming’ power) was firmly in the hands of the white (English and Afrikaans speaking) minority. The economy was dominated by longstanding companies that functioned largely in English, the language often referred to as the ‘language of the economy’.