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Sibaya
Provenance

Sources & Licences

Every claim on this site was read from a named work. This page says which works, whose terms govern each part, and what you may do with it.

The Short Version

Sibaya publishes three kinds of material and keeps them apart on purpose. A clan name, a totem, a surname, a place taken from any work, in copyright or out, carries no copyright and is published freely. Recitations from works whose copyright has expired are published in full, with the work named. Recitations from works still in copyright are not reproduced at all; those entries carry their facts, the line count, and the citation.

No share-alike material is published on this site. Nothing here obliges you to license anything of your own in return for reading or quoting it.

Public Domain, Published In Full

Works whose copyright term has expired. The recitations and glosses taken from them are published complete, with the work named on the entry.

Ten Xitsonga swiphato come from Henri-Alexandre Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe (Attinger Frères, 1912), which is age-expired in both South Africa and the United States. The Sotho and Tswana totem and grouping facts rest on Ellenberger & MacGregor (1912), MacGregor (1905) and Casalis (1861), all long expired.

What you may do: the underlying works are out of copyright, so the text taken from them is free for you to use. Sibaya asserts nothing over it.

Sibaya's Own

Sibaya writes the prose on these pages. That is the explanations of each clan system, the provenance notes, and the wording of every statement about standing and rights. The arrangement is written here too: which fields a clan page shows, how the 12 languages are grouped, how a held praise is presented.

The facts are not Sibaya's and are not claimed. A clan's name, its seboko or mutupo, its totem, its grouping, the surnames and places recorded with it belong to the families who hold them and to the record. No copyright is asserted over any of it, and none could be: a fact is not authored. The 700 clan names on this site are not Sibaya's property and this page does not pretend otherwise.

A praise is not Sibaya's either, ever. It belongs to the families who recite it. Where a family contributes their own recitation it stays theirs, and is published as theirs.

65 praise recitations were read from works that are in copyright. Their wording is not on this site. The entries are published with everything that is not protected: the clan name, the totem, the grouping, the surnames, the places, the line count. The work is named too, so anyone can read the recitation in a library, which is entirely lawful.

Naming a source is attribution, not a licence. Crediting an author does not create a permission to reproduce their text, and no decision taken at Sibaya can create one, because the right is not Sibaya's to waive.

4 further recitations turn on an unsettled question of law rather than a settled answer, and are reported as unresolved rather than guessed either way.

Every held recitation is listed by language, with the work it belongs to and the reasoning, below.

Share-Alike, Held And Not Published Here

Sibaya's dictionary corpus contains 1,094 lexeme rows across 31 languages taken from English Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org, under CC BY-SA. None of them are published on this site, and no dictionary is published on this site at all.

CC BY-SA permits reuse. It is a licence, not a prohibition, and the material could lawfully be published, but only on its terms. One of those terms travels. Attribution is straightforward: credit the source, link the licence, say whether it was changed. Share-alike is the one that matters: a dictionary presentation built from CC BY-SA entries is an adaptation, and an adaptation must be released under the same licence. That means anyone, including a competitor, could then reuse that dictionary commercially so long as they credited it and shared alike in turn. A Creative Commons licence is irrevocable for what has been released, so it is not a step that can be walked back.

That is a decision about the value of the asset, not a technicality, which is why it sits with Themba and why this page states it plainly rather than burying it. The material is marked at field level in the corpus and is separable, so it can be published or left held without disturbing anything else.

What this means for you today: nothing on this site carries a share-alike obligation. If that changes, this page changes with it and will say so, and the affected entries will carry the licence notice individually.

The Held Praises, And Which Works They Belong To

149 praise recitations were found, read and are not reproduced on this site. They are not held for one reason, and the difference matters to anyone deciding whether to send Sibaya their family's own recitation.

65 are held because a published author owns the wording. The recitation is communal and old; the particular rendering that was read is somebody's recent work, and that work is in copyright. Naming the author credits them. It does not license their text, and no decision taken at Sibaya can license it either, because the right is not Sibaya's to waive. The works are named below so anyone who wants to read the recitation properly can find it in a library, which is entirely lawful.

4 turn on a question of law that is genuinely open. In each case it is a volume issued by the Government Printer, where whether State copyright or the author's own term governs decides whether it expired decades ago or runs for years yet. No official rights statement exists either way, so they are reported rather than guessed.

80 rest on a single transcription from an open-web directory, with nothing independent corroborating it. That is Sibaya's own editorial standard rather than a legal bar. The caution that keeps it in place: community praise directories are known to copy from the same few published compilations, so a line appearing on three sites is usually one source three times rather than three sources.

In every case the facts are published and only the wording is missing. A clan's name, its seboko or mutupo or isibongo, its totem, its grouping, the surnames and the places recorded with it are facts, and no copyright attaches to a fact however recently the book was printed. Each of these clans has a full page.

Sesotho

32 praises held

32 under copyright · 267 recorded lines

Matšela & Moletsane, 'Mantilatilane (Morija Sesotho Book Depot, 1988)

In copyright. The community compilation these lines were read from states its own basis is 'Mantilatilane, which is in copyright. A chain to an in-copyright transcription is still a taking of it. Publishing 32 entries from the one compilation would also be a taking of the compilation, which South African law protects in its own right on a low originality threshold (Haupt v Brewers Marketing Intelligence 2006 (4) SA 458 (SCA)).

siSwati

31 praises held

17 under copyright · 44 recorded lines

Swaziland Oral History Project — edited transcripts and editorial endnotes, Wits Historical Papers A2760 (interviews 1968–1987; typescripts printed 2016 and 2021)

In copyright. The tinanatelo here were read out of SWOHP's edited typescripts and the editorial team's endnotes. The recitations belong to the narrators and their families; the edited transcription and the apparatus around it are a recent editorial work and are in copyright. The eMandulo platform's own label is a platform term applied by a non-rightsholder and determines nothing.

J.J. Thwala, 'An Examination of Clan Names and Clan Praises as Anthroponymic Domains in Swati Culture', Current Journal of Applied Science and Technology 40(1) (2021)

In copyright. A journal article published in 2021. In copyright.

14 single uncorroborated web source · 31 recorded lines

No book is named because there is none to name: these were read off community directories and blogs that state no licence and credit no transcriber. Each clan's page names the directory it was read from.

Xitsonga

11 praises held

11 under copyright · 33 recorded lines

S.J. Malungana, Vuphato: Praise Poetry in Xitsonga (D.Litt. et Phil. thesis, Rand Afrikaans University, 1994)

In copyright. A doctoral study whose swiphato were recorded from named performers in the author's own fieldwork. In copyright. The performers are the authority on the recitations; the thesis is the author's rendering of them.

H-A. Junod, The Life of a South African Tribe (Attinger Frères, 1912)

Public domain. Age-expired in South Africa and the United States. The ten Xitsonga swiphato from this work are published in full.

Tshivenda

8 praises held

5 under copyright · 10 recorded lines

N.C. Ṋetshisaulu, 'The Role Played by Nicknames and Totems in the Development of Tshivenḓa Surnames', E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 6(7) (2025)

In copyright. A peer-reviewed article published in 2025. In copyright. Its totem, oath and taboo statements are facts and are published here; its wording is not.

S.M. Dzivhani & E. Mudau, Mahosi a Venḓa na Vhadau vha Tshakhuma (Government Printer, Pretoria, 1958)

Unresolved. The same unsettled question as Van Warmelo 1935, and for the same reason: a Government Printer publication, so whether s 5 State copyright (50 years from publication, expired end 2008) or s 3 life-plus-50 governs decides it, and no rights statement exists either way.

2 rights unresolved · 2 recorded lines

S.M. Dzivhani & E. Mudau, Mahosi a Venḓa na Vhadau vha Tshakhuma (Government Printer, Pretoria, 1958)

Unresolved. The same unsettled question as Van Warmelo 1935, and for the same reason: a Government Printer publication, so whether s 5 State copyright (50 years from publication, expired end 2008) or s 3 life-plus-50 governs decides it, and no rights statement exists either way.

1 single uncorroborated web source · 1 recorded lines

No book is named because there is none to name: these were read off community directories and blogs that state no licence and credit no transcriber. Each clan's page names the directory it was read from.

Sesotho sa Leboa

14 praises held

2 rights unresolved · 2 recorded lines

N.J. van Warmelo, A Preliminary Survey of the Bantu Tribes of South Africa (Ethnological Publications Vol. V, Government Printer, 1935)

Unresolved. Public domain if s 5 State copyright governs: Government Printer, 1935, so 50 years from publication, expired end 1985. In copyright until 2039 if s 3 governs: Van Warmelo died 1989, life plus 50. No official or repository rights statement exists either way.

12 single uncorroborated web source · 78 recorded lines

No book is named because there is none to name: these were read off community directories and blogs that state no licence and credit no transcriber. Each clan's page names the directory it was read from.

isiNdebele (Northern Ndebele)

28 praises held

28 single uncorroborated web source · 100 recorded lines

No book is named because there is none to name: these were read off community directories and blogs that state no licence and credit no transcriber. Each clan's page names the directory it was read from.

isiNdebele (Southern Ndebele)

21 praises held

21 single uncorroborated web source · 67 recorded lines

No book is named because there is none to name: these were read off community directories and blogs that state no licence and credit no transcriber. Each clan's page names the directory it was read from.

Setswana

4 praises held

4 single uncorroborated web source · 31 recorded lines

No book is named because there is none to name: these were read off community directories and blogs that state no licence and credit no transcriber. Each clan's page names the directory it was read from.

This is research for a decision, not legal advice. Every position above is stated with its reasoning so it can be checked and corrected. If you hold a right in any work named here, or can settle one of the unresolved questions, tell us and it will be changed.

If your family holds one of these recitations, your own words carry nothing on them and are the better record. Send it and it will be published as yours.

How The Sources Are Weighed

Every reading in the name corpus carries the code of the work it was read from. The codes are how a claim is traced back to a page; they are not shown to readers, because an identifier like BTN-ZU means nothing outside this project. Where a source is named on a page it is named in words: Ancestry24, Behind the Name, Wiktionary.

Tier A is peer-reviewed or institutional scholarship, and first-language speakers reporting names borne in their own families. Tier B is a curated directory or genealogy portal that names its editorial practice. Tier C is an open community wiki or a hobbyist compilation. Tier D is user-submitted material carrying the host site's own disclaimer that accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Some material is unrated because it is not a publication at all: a research compilation supplied to the project, whose compiler is not named and whose method is not stated, is carried behind a flag and never presented as a source.

Repetition across community directories is not corroboration. They copy from each other and from the same few published books, so provenance is traced rather than counted. A line appearing on three sites is usually one source three times.

No first-language reader has checked the name corpus. Every entry says so on its own page and in every search result, and the loader asserts it: an entry arriving without that flag fails the build rather than publishing quietly.

Pictures, And Who Is In Them

Some of the photographs on this site are Themba's own and he holds the copyright in them. Others are drawings rather than photographs. The drawing on the heritage page says so underneath it, and the others are being captioned the same way.

No likeness of a real person is published here. Not a photograph, and not a drawing either. Drawn portraits of historic figures were prepared and were not used: a face a reader recognises makes a claim about a real person, and a caption does not undo it. Where this site has something to say about somebody who lived, it says it in words, with the source it was read from, in the same shape a clan record takes.

The people in the drawings are not anybody. They are not members of Sibaya, they are not families whose records appear here, and they are not drawn from anyone in particular.

If you hold a right in a picture on this site, or you recognise yourself or a relative in one, tell us and it will come down while we look at it.

Standing, Which Is Not A Licence Question

Separately from rights: community recorded and some material is licensed. 303 clans carry a recorded disagreement, shown rather than settled. A family who holds a recitation is the authority on it, not Sibaya and not a collector.

isiZulu praises were compiled from: iafrika.org, zuluring.blogspot.com, izithakazelo.blog, izithakazeloizibongo.blogspot.com, izithakazelo.wordpress.com. Every other language's sources are named on each clan's own page.

This page is a statement of provenance, not legal advice. If you hold a right in any work named here, or can settle one of the unresolved questions, tell us and it will be corrected.