ABSTRACT
There is general agreement among the ethnographers and linguists of this region that the term “ Bamileke " is incorrectly applied to the peoples who are to be described here. The people designated by this name do not refer to themselves as Bamileke, nor do the Bamum, their neighbours to the north, who, according to Despois, call them Batongtou, “ people of the mountains.” 1 Stoll states that the name is a European corruption of the native word current in Dschang, mbaliku (mba —the first ones, liku-a hole in the ground). The Dschang people refer to their chief as efoo liku Tsan (" chief of the Dschang hole ''), which relates to the belief that their first ancestors emerged from the earth.2 Other informants attribute its invention to the Bali peoples in the British zone of the Cameroons; these call the inhabitants of Dschang, Lekeu, which means valley or ravine. The Bantu plural form ba was prefixed at the time of the European occupation, giving Balekeu, which afterwards developed into Bamilekeu-" the people of the valleys/'3 Bouchaud maintains that the name Bamileke properly belongs to a small group of some 4,000 people situated on the Franco-British frontier to the west of Dschang.4 The name, however, does not appear anywhere in Tessmann's linguistic and ethnic map.
