There are eleven official names of South Africa, one in each of its eleven official languages. The number is surpassed only by India. These languages include English, Afrikaans, the Nguni languages (Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, and Swazi), as well as the Sotho languages, which include Tswana, Sotho and Northern Sotho. The remaining two languages are Venda and Tsonga.
There are smaller but still significant groups of speakers of Khoi-San languages which are not official languages, but are one of the eight unofficially recognised languages. There are even smaller groups of speakers of endangered languages, many of which are from the Khoi-San family, but receive no official status; however, some groups within South Africa are attempting to promote their use and revival.
The official names are:
And one former name:
South Africa's country code, ZA, is an abbreviation of this former official name, Zuid-Afrika.