Curious Cape Town: 12 place names explained

If Mouille Point – where you’ll find one of the city’s most famous lighthouses – sounds French, that’s because it is! But there’s a bigger story at play. In 1743, Dutch colonial authorities began building a breakwater – a moeilje in Dutch – here to protect ships from the Cape’s notorious winter gales (that would have been handy in the great gale of 1865!). Farmers bringing produce into town were required to carry stones to the site, while enslaved people and convicts worked on the structure itself. The project was abandoned after only about 100 metres, but the name endured, and when French troops arrived in 1781 to defend the Cape against the British, they spelt it mouille, and the name stuck!

Fling your kikoi down on the rocks at Bakoven on a sunny Saturday, and chances are you’re here for the blue waters and calm swimming. Tucked between Camps Bay and Oudekraal, Bakoven is one of those secret spots that locals would gladly keep to themselves. And it’s been popular for the longest time, with early Dutch settlers evidently camping out for a break from life in town. Much like weekend sun-worshippers today. Those first beach bums looked offshore, saw the giant granite boulders, and commented that it looked like an oversized baking oven: in Dutch, a ‘bakoven’.

Chances are, you’ve been pronouncing the name of this gorgeous Cape Town beach all wrong. While we might all be heading to lan-dud-no for sundowners, you’ll need to watch this crash course in Welsh pronunciation to shay it properly.

This gorgeous slip of sand on Victoria Road – it’s one of Time Out’s best beaches in Cape Town – was named after the seaside resort of Llandudno in North Wales, where the name actually means ‘Parish of Saint Tudno’ in Welsh. The Cape version was declared a suburb in 1903, and the name was chosen because it looked similar to the original in Wales. I’ve been to both, and I have to say that Cape Town’s Llandudno is far more impressive.

One of the most charming seaside suburbs in Cape Town – here are 13 reasons why you should visit – Kalk Bay started out less about boho chic boutiques and more about burning seashells into dust. Kalk Bay means ‘Lime Bay’ and owes its settling and its name to the large deposits of mussel shells that early settlers burned to make lime for construction. Long before the village became known for fishing boats, antique shops and harbour-side lunches, it was all about shell-gathering, lime-burning and the needs of a growing colonial settlement.

Flowing through Cape Town’s southern suburbs, the Liesbeek River is one of the city’s unsung green spaces. From shady parks in Fernwood to riverside trails in Observatory, it’s long been a landmark of the city. It’s also one of Cape Town’s oldest European-recorded place names and was among the first rivers named by settler Jan van Riebeeck. 

Unfortunately, it’s not one of his most creative. ‘Beek’ is Dutch for stream, and ‘lies’ refers to reeds. Liesbeek, then, is simply ‘reed stream’. Wow, Jan, thanks for being so lyrical! Simple as the name may be, the Liesbeek has long been central to this part of Cape Town, feeding the farms that sprouted along its banks and carrying water from Table Mountain to the sea. 

Time Out Tip: Learn about the fantastic conservation work done by Friends of the Liesbeek.

Muizenberg, for most people, sounds loosely translated from Dutch or Afrikaans as ‘mice mountain’, and while there are no doubt a few stripy rodents up on the peaks, the mountain – and suburb – isn’t named for mice at all. The False Bay suburb was established by Dutch colonisers in 1743 as a military post, and was named after Wynand Willem Muijs, the sergeant in charge. In 1795, the Battle of Muizenberg – the hillside where it took place is now a provincial heritage site – helped trigger the first British occupation of the Cape, placing this surf-side name firmly in the story of watch posts and empire.

Today this glamorous stretch of sand, sea and sunset spots is onen of the most popular corners of Cape Town. You might want  to camp out here for a spell, but the origina of this ever-popular beach’s name has nothing to do with canvas. Rather, Camps Bay began as Baai von Kamptz. Meaning, simply, the Bay of Kamptz. Friedrich von Kamptz was a Dutch sailor who arrived at the Cape in 1778 and settled in this then-remote corner of the Cape. He married Anna Wernich, widow and owner of the adjoining farm Ravensteyn, and over time von Kamptz softened into ‘Camps”, giving the bay its modern name.

So you’ve been up the cableway and think you’ve been to the top of Table Mountain? Sorry, think again! The actual high point of Table Mountain – at 1086 metres above sea level – is about two kilometres from the Upper Cableway Station, a wonderful walk along sandstone paths and boardwalks. But who was Maclear, and why did he need a beacon?

Maclear’s Beacon is named after Sir Thomas Maclear, the Irish-born astronomer who served as Astronomer Royal at the Cape. One of his most ambitious projects was measuring the curvature of the Earth, and the large stone cairn was erected in 1844 to support his trigonometric survey.

Yup, you guessed it. The Pipe Track does what it says, but perhaps not the pipe you're thinking of. This path is one of the best day hikes in Cape Town, and follows the line of water pipes laid along the western slopes of Table Mountain. The route was built in the late 1800s to carry water from the Back Table reservoirs (you can read about them here) via the Woodhead Tunnel towards the Molteno Reservoir and the city below. Today, it is one of Cape Town’s most accessible mountain walks, offering fantastic views over the Atlantic Seaboard and a reminder of the inventive engineering that has kept the city’s taps flowing for more than a century. 

Now, you’d expect this dramatic mountain pass, and well-known corner of Cape Town, to be named after some politician or colonial governor. But it was actually John Chapman, the mate (a deck officer, usually second in command to the captain) of an English ship called ‘Consent’, who lends his name to one of the most scenic roads in Cape Town. In 1607, his ship was becalmed in what is now Hout Bay, and Chapman was sent ashore to find food and water for the crew. We can presume he did a good job, as his name was later given to the mountain peak and then to Chapman’s Peak Drive, which first opened in 1922.

Before it became Bantry Bay, this gorgeous pocket on the Atlantic Seaboard was actually known as Botany Bay, thanks to a botanical garden for medicinal herbs planted on the slopes above by two German settlers. A later owner, an Irishman named O’Callaghan from County Cork, renamed the area after Bantry Bay in Ireland. Today, that imported name sits above one of Cape Town’s most sought-after and famously glamorous stretches of coastline. Even if you can’t afford to stay here, Bantry Bay is worth a visit for the Saunders Rock tidal pool, one of the best tidal pools in Cape Town!

Sometimes, the truth is lost to history. But if you’ve ever driven the glorious Clarence Drive – one of our favourite scenic drives out of Cape Town – you might have wondered what a ‘kogel’ is. And no, it’s not a kugel.

Unfortunately, Kogel Bay is one of those names that resists a neat answer. Kogel or koeël means “ball” or “bullet” in Afrikaans and could be a reference to the rounded stones along the coastline. Another suggests it comes from a corruption of ‘Cole’, from the ship Colebrooke, which wrecked nearby in 1778. Either way, this beautiful stretch of sand between Gordon’s Bay and Rooi-Els is always worth a stop while you ponder where the truth lies.