The Croak #5 - March 2025

South African frogs and their 11 common names

Bridging Tongues, Saving Frogs...

Tomopturna - Sand Frogs -Isele Lasesihlabathini (photo credit Bionerds Pty Ltd)

In a country as linguistically rich as South Africa, what’s in a name can be the difference between confusion and connection. In this guest blog, Dr Fortunate Phaka takes us on a journey through the 11 official languages of South Africa—highlighting how local frog names aren’t just words, but cultural keys to conservation. From “Segwagwa” to “Mabhruku,” these names carry stories, sounds, and significance. Dive in and discover how embracing language diversity can help us protect amphibian diversity too.

A single frog species having 11 names in 11 different languages might seem excessive, but it makes good conservation sense for multilingual countries like South Africa.  It means wherever your conservation project takes you in the country, language becomes less of a barrier as you can use a name that people are familiar with in a language they are comfortable with. Consequently, you can be assured that you and other stakeholders are directing conservation action at the correct species without the confusion of scientific names or English names in South Africa’s rural areas where literacy is still unfortunately low.

Dr Fortunate Phaka, author of the first bilingual fieldguide to frogs of Zululand.

Indigenous names in all of South Africa’s official languages for 130+ of the country’s frog species are now available for anyone to use thanks to an ongoing research project that investigates interactions between frog diversity and people’s value-practice systems or cultural practices. Throughout the African continent there are areas where high frog diversity and high cultural diversity are found side by side. In such areas there are interactions between frogs and people’s way of doing things beyond the socioeconomic activities that change frog habitats. A lot of research within this human-wildlife interactions sphere is focused on direct interactions including harvesting frogs to eat or use in traditional medicine and killing frogs due culture-based misconceptions. This increased focus on direct interactions that result in killing of frogs is justified as improved understanding of such interactions is used to inform the mitigation of frog population declines.

There is also conservation value in understanding the indirect interactions that do not lead to frogs being killed. These interactions help us understand how people make sense of their local frog diversity especially in cases where frog species do not have any direct use value like when they are harvested for food. In the case of the local names that people assign to frog species, this is a way of organising the frog diversity they interact with into logical parts so they can talk about it without confusion. SePedi speakers use the general name ‘Segwagwa’ for all frog species (gwa-gwa mimics the sound made by some frogs). In KwaZulu-Natal province Reed Frogs are called ‘Umgqagqa’ or ‘Umgqagqo’ depending on the IsiZulu dialect spoken. Among some XiTsonga speakers Plain Grass Frogs are called Mabhruku (i.e., long legs) in recognition of their ability to jump further than most frogs they share habitats with.  There are many other examples of local names for frogs and without these naming practices every frog species would be called a ‘hoppy thing’ and trying to tell someone that South Africa has over 130 ‘hoppy things’ would be very confusing. Scientific names exist to avoid the confusion of calling every animal species different names by using nomenclature rules that allow people to assign universally unique latinised names for every known species.  But these names are mostly used by people who have a formal education in science, and at least some level of an understanding of what they mean or how they are applied. When working on frogs in areas without that level of literacy, it helps to know how the local collaborators in your conservation project are naming the ‘hoppy things’ they encounter.

Dr Phaka's website, www.wildvernac.org, is an initiative originating from research into the relationship between biological and cultural diversity in South Africa.

These names of frogs in the 11 official languages of South Africa are now available to freely download and use. The process of compiling this comprehensive list began with recording frog names that people use throughout the country and investigating how those names are assigned to different species. Many of the recorded names grouped multiple frog species together. These general names were made specific to each South African frog species by adding descriptors to them and applying the principles used to assign unique scientific names to each known species. The result is we now have unique names for each South African frog species, in the country’s 11 official languages. This list of names is updated as new frog species are discovered in South Africa, which to the delight of many herpetologists is happening regularly.

Read more about naming South Africa’s frog species in 11 official languages:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324598778_Isiqondiso_Sasefilidini_Esindimimbili_Ngamaxoxo_AkwelaKwaZulu-Suricata_3_-_Zulu_A_Bilingual_Field_Guide_to_the_Frogs_of_Zululand