title: Courtesan

text: Separately from this list, the term "courtesan" has been used in a political context in an attempt to damage the reputation of a powerful woman, or disparage her importance. Because of this, there is still much historical debate over whether certain women in history were courtesans. For example, the title was applied to the Byzantine empress Theodora, who had started life as an erotic actress but later became the wife of the Emperor Justinian and, after her death, an Orthodox saint. The term has also been applied to influential women including Anne Boleyn, Umrao Jaan, Diane de Poitiers, Mathilde Kschessinska, Pamela Harriman, Eva Perón and Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel. The attempt to define such women as courtesans has been intended to draw attention to certain perceived qualities, ambitions or conduct which are held to be courtesan-like. Because of this, only professional courtesans should be listed.


title: San people

text: The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the first cultures of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa. In 2017, Botswana was home to approximately 63,500 San people (roughly 2.8% of the population) making it the country with the highest number of San people.


title: San people

text: The term "San" has a long vowel and is spelled Sān (in Khoekhoegowab orthography). It is a Khoekhoe exonym with the meaning of "foragers" and was often used in a derogatory manner to describe nomadic, foraging people. Based on observation of lifestyle, this term has been applied to speakers of three distinct language families living between the Okavango River in Botswana and Etosha National Park in northwestern Namibia, extending up into southern Angola; central peoples of most of Namibia and Botswana, extending into Zambia and Zimbabwe; and the southern people in the central Kalahari towards the Molopo River, who are the last remnant of the previously extensive indigenous "San" of South Africa.


title: San people

text: The endonyms used by San themselves refer to their individual nations, including the ǃKung (ǃXuun (subdivisions ǂKxʼaoǁʼae (Auen), Juǀʼhoan, etc.), the Tuu (subdivisions ǀXam, Nusan (Nǀu), ǂKhomani, etc.) and Tshu–Khwe groups such as the Khwe (Khoi, Kxoe), Haiǁom, Naro, Tsoa, Gǁana (Gana) and Gǀui (ǀGwi). Representatives of San peoples in 2003 stated their preference for the use of such individual group names where possible over the use of the collective term "San".


title: San people

text: The designations "Bushmen" and "San" are both exonyms in origin, but "San" had been widely adopted as an endonym by the late 1990s. "San" originates as a pejorative Khoekhoe appellation for foragers without cattle or other wealth, from a root "saa" "picking up from the ground" + plural "-n" in the Haiǁom dialect. The term "Bushmen", from 17th-century Dutch "", is still widely used by others and to self-identify, but in some instances the term has also been described as pejorative.


title: San people

text: Adoption of the Khoekhoe term "San" in Western anthropology dates to the 1970s, and this remains the standard term in English-language ethnographic literature, although some authors later switched back to using the name "Bushmen".


title: San people

text: The compound "Khoisan", used to refer to the pastoralist Khoi and the foraging San collectively, was coined by Leonhard Schulze in the 1920s and popularised by Isaac Schapera in 1930, and anthropological use of "San" was detached from the compound "Khoisan",


title: San people

text: as it has been reported that the exonym "San" is perceived as a pejorative in parts of the central Kalahari. By the late 1990s, the term "San" was in general use by the people themselves.


title: San people

text: The adoption of the term was preceded by a number of meetings held in the 1990s where delegates debated on the adoption of a collective term. These meetings included the Common Access to Development Conference organised by the Government of Botswana held in Gaborone in 1993, the 1996 inaugural Annual General Meeting of the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) held in Namibia, and a 1997 conference in Cape Town on "Khoisan Identities and Cultural Heritage" organised by the University of the Western Cape.


title: San people

text: The term "San" is now standard in South African, and used officially in the blazon of the national coat-of-arms. The "South African San Council" representing San communities in South Africa was established as part of WIMSA in 2001.


title: San people

text: "Bushmen" is now considered derogatory by many South Africans, to the point where, in 2008, use of "boesman" (the modern Afrikaans equivalent of "Bushman") in the "Die Burger" newspaper was brought before the Equality Court, which however ruled that the mere use of the term cannot be taken as derogatory, after the San Council had testified that it had no objection to its use in a positive context.


title: San people

text: The term is a Bantu (Tswana) word meaning "those who do not rear cattle". Use of the "mo/ba-" noun class indicates "people who are accepted", as opposed to the use of "Masarwa", an older variant which is now considered offensive.


title: San people

text: In Angola they are sometimes referred to as "mucancalas", or "bosquímanos" (a Portuguese adaptation of the Dutch term for "Bushmen").


title: San people

text: The Bantu term "Batwa" refers to any foraging tribesmen and as such overlaps with the terminology used for the "Pygmoid" Southern Twa of South-Central Africa.


title: San people

text: The hunter-gatherer San are among the oldest cultures on Earth, and are thought to be descended from the first inhabitants of what is now Botswana and South Africa. The historical presence of the San in Botswana is particularly evident in northern Botswana's Tsodilo Hills region. San were traditionally semi-nomadic, moving seasonally within certain defined areas based on the availability of resources such as water, game animals, and edible plants. Peoples related to or similar to the San occupied the southern shores throughout the eastern shrubland and may have formed a Sangoan continuum from the Red Sea to the Cape of Good Hope.


title: San people

text: From the 1950s through to the 1990s, San communities switched to farming because of government-mandated modernization programs. Despite the lifestyle changes, they have provided a wealth of information in anthropology and genetics. One broad study of African genetic diversity, completed in 2009, found that the genetic diversity of the San was among the top five of all 121 sampled populations. Certain San groups are one of 14 known extant "ancestral population clusters"; that is, "groups of populations with common genetic ancestry, who share ethnicity and similarities in both their culture and the properties of their languages".


title: San people

text: Despite some positive aspects of government development programs reported by members of San and Bakgalagadi communities in Botswana, many have spoken of a consistent sense of exclusion from government decision-making processes, and many San and Bakgalagadi have alleged experiencing ethnic discrimination on the part of the government. The United States Department of State described ongoing discrimination against San, or "Basarwa", people in Botswana in 2013 as the "principal human rights concern" of that country.


title: San people

text: The San kinship system reflects their history as traditionally small mobile foraging bands. San kinship is similar to Eskimo kinship, which uses the same set of terms as in European cultures, but adds a name rule and an age rule for determining what terms to use. The age rule resolves any confusion arising from kinship terms, as the older of two people always decides what to call the younger. Relatively few names circulate (approximately 35 names per sex), and each child is named after a grandparent or another relative, but never their parents.


title: San people

text: Children have no social duties besides playing, and leisure is very important to San of all ages. Large amounts of time are spent in conversation, joking, music, and sacred dances. Women may be leaders of their own family groups. They may also make important family and group decisions and claim ownership of water holes and foraging areas. Women are mainly involved in the gathering of food, but sometimes also take part in hunting.


title: San people

text: Water is important in San life. During long droughts, they make use of sip wells in order to collect water. To make a sip well, a San scrapes a deep hole where the sand is damp, and inserts a long hollow grass stem into the hole. An empty ostrich egg is used to collect the water. Water is sucked into the straw from the sand, into the mouth, and then travels down another straw into the ostrich egg.


title: San people

text: Traditionally, the San were an egalitarian society. Although they had hereditary chiefs, their authority was limited. The San made decisions among themselves by consensus, with women treated as relative equals in decision making. San economy was a gift economy, based on giving each other gifts regularly rather than on trading or purchasing goods and services.


title: San people

text: Most San are monogamous, but if a hunter is able to obtain enough food, he can afford to have a second wife as well.


title: San people

text: Villages range in sturdiness from nightly rain shelters in the warm spring (when people move constantly in search of budding greens), to formalized rings, wherein people congregate in the dry season around permanent waterholes. Early spring is the hardest season: a hot dry period following the cool, dry winter. Most plants still are dead or dormant, and supplies of autumn nuts are exhausted. Meat is particularly important in the dry months when wildlife can not range far from the receding waters.


title: San people

text: Women gather fruit, berries, tubers, bush onions, and other plant materials for the band's consumption. Ostrich eggs are gathered, and the empty shells are used as water containers. Insects provide perhaps 10% of animal proteins consumed, most often during the dry season. Depending on location, the San consume 18 to 104 species, including grasshoppers, beetles, caterpillars, moths, butterflies, and termites.


title: San people

text: Women's traditional gathering gear is simple and effective: a hide sling, a blanket, a cloak called a "kaross" to carry foodstuffs, firewood, smaller bags, a digging stick, and perhaps, a smaller version of the kaross to carry a baby.


title: San people

text: Men hunt in long, laborious tracking excursions. They kill their game using bow and arrows and spears tipped in diamphotoxin, a slow-acting arrow poison produced by beetle larvae of the genus "Diamphidia".


title: San people

text: A set of tools almost identical to that used by the modern San and dating to 42,000 BC was discovered at Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal in 2012.


title: San people

text: Historical evidence shows that certain San communities have always lived in the desert regions of the Kalahari; however, eventually nearly all other San communities in southern Africa were forced into this region. The Kalahari San remained in poverty where their richer neighbours denied them rights to the land. Before long, in both Botswana and Namibia, they found their territory drastically reduced.


title: San people

text: Various Y chromosome studies show that the San carry some of the most divergent (oldest) human Y-chromosome haplogroups. These haplogroups are specific sub-groups of haplogroups A and B, the two earliest branches on the human Y-chromosome tree.


title: San people

text: Mitochondrial DNA studies also provide evidence that the San carry high frequencies of the earliest haplogroup branches in the human mitochondrial DNA tree. This DNA is inherited only from one's mother. The most divergent (oldest) mitochondrial haplogroup, L0d, has been identified at its highest frequencies in the southern African San groups.


title: San people

text: In a study published in March 2011, Brenna Henn and colleagues found that the ǂKhomani San, as well as the Sandawe and Hadza peoples of Tanzania, were the most genetically diverse of any living humans studied. This high degree of genetic diversity hints at the origin of anatomically modern humans.


title: San people

text: A 2008 study suggested that the San may have been isolated from other original ancestral groups for as much as 50,000 to 100,000 years and later rejoined, re-integrating into the rest of the human gene pool.


title: San people

text: A DNA study of fully sequenced genomes, published in September 2016, showed that the ancestors of today's San hunter-gatherers began to diverge from other human populations in Africa about 200,000 years ago and were fully isolated by 100,000 years ago.


title: San people

text: Much aboriginal people's land in Botswana, including land occupied by the San people (or "Basarwa"), was conquered during colonisation. Loss of land and access to natural resources continued after Botswana's independence. The San have been particularly affected by encroachment by majority peoples and non-indigenous farmers onto their traditional land. Government policies from the 1970s transferred a significant area of traditionally San land to majority agro-pastoralist tribes and white settlers Much of the government's policy regarding land tended to favor the dominant Tswana peoples over the minority San and Bakgalagadi. Loss of land is a major contributor to the problems facing Botswana's indigenous people, including especially the San's eviction from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The government of Botswana decided to relocate all of those living within the reserve to settlements outside it. Harassment of residents, dismantling of infrastructure, and bans on hunting appear to have been used to induce residents to leave. The government has denied that any of the relocation was forced. A legal battle followed. The relocation policy may have been intended to facilitate diamond mining by Gem Diamonds within the reserve.


title: San people

text: "Hoodia gordonii", used by the San, was patented by the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 1998, for its presumed appetite suppressing quality. A licence was granted to Phytopharm, for development of the active ingredient in the "Hoodia" plant, p57 (glycoside), to be used as a pharmaceutical drug for dieting. Once this patent was brought to the attention of the San, a benefit-sharing agreement was reached between them and the CSIR in 2003. This would award royalties to the San for the benefits of their indigenous knowledge. During the case, the San people were represented and assisted by the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA), the South African San Council and the South African San Institute.


title: San people

text: This benefit-sharing agreement is one of the first to give royalties to the holders of traditional knowledge used for drug sales. The terms of the agreement are contentious, because of their apparent lack of adherence to the Bonn Guidelines on Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit Sharing, as outlined in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The San have yet to profit from this agreement, as P57 has still not yet been legally developed and marketed.


title: San people

text: The San of the Kalahari were first brought to the globalized world's attention in the 1950s by South African author Laurens van der Post. Van der Post grew up in South Africa, and had a respectful lifelong fascination with native African cultures. In 1955, he was commissioned by the BBC to go to the Kalahari desert with a film crew in search of the San. The filmed material was turned into a very popular six-part television documentary a year later. Driven by a lifelong fascination with this "vanished tribe", Van der Post published a 1958 book about this expedition, entitled "The Lost World of the Kalahari". It was to be his most famous book.


title: San people

text: In 1961, he published "The Heart of the Hunter", a narrative which he admits in the introduction uses two previous works of stories and mythology as "a sort of Stone Age Bible", namely "Specimens of Bushman Folklore"' (1911), collected by Wilhelm H. I. Bleek and Lucy C. Lloyd, and Dorothea Bleek's "Mantis and His Friend". Van der Post's work brought indigenous African cultures to millions of people around the world for the first time, but some people disparaged it as part of the subjective view of a European in the 1950s and 1960s, stating that he branded the San as simple "children of Nature" or even "mystical ecologists".


title: San people

text: In 1992 by John Perrot and team published the book "Bush for the Bushman" – a "desperate plea" on behalf of the aboriginal San addressing the international community and calling on the governments throughout Southern Africa to respect and reconstitute the ancestral land-rights of all San.


title: San people

text: John Marshall, the son of Harvard anthropologist Lorna Marshall, documented the lives of San in the Nyae Nyae region of Namibia over a more than 50-year period. His early film "The Hunters", shows a giraffe hunt. "A Kalahari Family" (2002) is a series documenting 50 years in the lives of the "Juǀʼhoansi" of Southern Africa, from 1951 to 2000. Marshall was a vocal proponent of the San cause throughout his life. His sister Elizabeth Marshall Thomas wrote several books and numerous articles about the San, based in part on her experiences living with these people when their culture was still intact. "The Harmless People", published in 1959, and "The Old Way: A Story of the First People", published in 2006, are two of them. John Marshall and Adrienne Miesmer documented the lives of the ǃKung San people between the 1950s and 1978 in "Nǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman". This film, the account of a woman who grew up while the San lived as autonomous hunter-gatherers, but who later was forced into a dependent life in the government-created community at Tsumkwe, shows how the lives of the ǃKung people, who lived for millennia as hunter gatherers, were forever changed when they were forced onto a reservation too small to support them.


title: San people

text: South African film-maker Richard Wicksteed has produced a number of documentaries on San culture, history and present situation; these include "In God's Places" / "Iindawo ZikaThixo" (1995) on the San cultural legacy in the southern Drakensberg; "Death of a Bushman" (2002) on the murder of San tracker Optel Rooi by South African police; "The Will To Survive" (2009), which covers the history and situation of San communities in southern Africa today; and "My Land is My Dignity" (2009) on the San's epic land rights struggle in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve.


title: San people

text: A documentary on San hunting entitled, "The Great Dance: A Hunter's Story" (2000), directed by Damon and Craig Foster. This was reviewed by Lawrence Van Gelder for the "New York Times", who said that the film "constitutes an act of preservation and a requiem".


title: San people

text: Spencer Wells's 2003 book "The Journey of Man"—in connection with National Geographic's Genographic Project—discusses a genetic analysis of the San and asserts their genetic markers were the first ones to split from those of the ancestors of the bulk of other "Homo sapiens sapiens". The PBS documentary based on the book follows these markers throughout the world, demonstrating that all of humankind can be traced back to the African continent (see Recent African origin of modern humans, the so-called "out of Africa" hypothesis).


title: San people

text: The BBC's "The Life of Mammals" (2003) series includes video footage of an indigenous San of the Kalahari desert undertaking a persistence hunt of a kudu through harsh desert conditions. It provides an illustration of how early man may have pursued and captured prey with minimal weaponry.


title: San people

text: The BBC series "How Art Made the World" (2005) compares San cave paintings from 200 years ago to Paleolithic European paintings that are 14,000 years old. Because of their similarities, the San works may illustrate the reasons for ancient cave paintings. The presenter Nigel Spivey draws largely on the work of Professor David Lewis-Williams, whose PhD was entitled "Believing and Seeing: Symbolic meanings in southern San rock paintings". Lewis-Williams draws parallels with prehistoric art around the world, linking in shamanic ritual and trance states.


title: San people

text: A 1969 film, "Lost in the Desert", features a small boy, stranded in the desert, who encounters a group of wandering San. They help him and then abandon him as a result of a misunderstanding created by the lack of a common language and culture. The film was directed by Jamie Uys, who returned to the San a decade later with "The Gods Must Be Crazy", which proved to be an international hit. This comedy portrays a Kalahari San group's first encounter with an artifact from the outside world (a Coca-Cola bottle). By the time this movie was made, the ǃKung had recently been forced into sedentary villages, and the San hired as actors were confused by the instructions to act out inaccurate exaggerations of their almost abandoned hunting and gathering life.


title: San people

text: "Eh Hee" by Dave Matthews Band was written as an evocation of the music and culture of the San. In a story told to the Radio City audience (an edited version of which appears on the DVD version of "Live at Radio City"), Matthews recalls hearing the music of the San and, upon asking his guide what the words to their songs were, being told that "there are no words to these songs, because these songs, we've been singing since before people had words". He goes on to describe the song as his "homage to meeting... the most advanced people on the planet".


title: San people

text: In Peter Godwin's biography "When A Crocodile Eats the Sun", he mentions his time spent with the San for an assignment. His title comes from the San's belief that a solar eclipse occurs when a crocodile eats the sun.


title: San people

text: Laurens van der Post's two novels, "A Story Like The Wind" (1972) and its sequel, "A Far Off Place" (1974), made into a 1993 film, are about a white boy encountering a wandering San and his wife, and how the San's life and survival skills save the white teenagers' lives in a journey across the desert.


title: San people

text: James A. Michener's "The Covenant" (1980), is a work of historical fiction centered on South Africa. The first section of the book concerns a San community's journey set roughly in 13,000 BC.


title: San people

text: In Wilbur Smith's novel "The Burning Shore" (an instalment in the Courtneys of Africa book series), the San people are portrayed through two major characters, O'wa and H'ani; Smith describes the San's struggles, history, and beliefs in great detail.


title: San people

text: Norman Rush's 1991 novel Mating features an encampment of Basarwa near the (imaginary) Botswana town where the main action is set.


title: San people

text: Tad Williams's epic "Otherland" series of novels features a South African San named ǃXabbu, whom Williams confesses to be highly fictionalised, and not necessarily an accurate representation. In the novel, Williams invokes aspects of San mythology and culture.


title: San people

text: In 2007, David Gilman published "The Devil's Breath". One of the main characters, a small San boy named ǃKoga, uses traditional methods to help the character Max Gordon travel across Namibia.


title: San people

text: Alexander McCall Smith has written a series of episodic novels set in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana. The fiancé of the protagonist of "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, adopts two orphaned San children, sister and brother Motholeli and Puso.


title: San people

text: The San feature in several of the novels by Michael Stanley (the "nom de plume" of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip), particularly in "Death of the Mantis".


title: Languages of Africa

text: There are several other small families and language isolates, as well as creoles and languages that have yet to be classified. In addition, Africa has a wide variety of sign languages, many of which are language isolates.


title: Languages of Africa

text: The total number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SIL Ethnologue), one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the world. However, "One of the notable differences between Africa and most other linguistic areas is its relative uniformity. With few exceptions, all of Africa’s languages have been gathered into four major phyla."


title: Languages of Africa

text: Around a hundred languages are widely used for inter-ethnic communication. Arabic, Somali, Berber, Amharic, Oromo, Igbo, Swahili, Hausa, Manding, Fulani and Yoruba are spoken by tens of millions of people. Twelve dialect clusters (which may group up to a hundred linguistic varieties) are spoken by 75 percent, and fifteen by 85 percent, of Africans as a first or additional language. Although many mid-sized languages are used on the radio, in newspapers and in primary-school education, and some of the larger ones are considered national languages, only a few are official at the national level. The African Union declared 2006 the "Year of African Languages".


title: Languages of Africa

text: Most languages spoken in Africa belong to one of three large language families: Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan and Niger–Congo. Another hundred belong to smaller families such as Ubangian (sometimes grouped within Niger-Congo) and the various families called Khoisan, or the Indo-European and Austronesian language families mainly spoken outside Africa; the presence of the latter two dates to 2,600 and 1,500 years ago, respectively. In addition, the languages of Africa include several unclassified languages and sign languages.


title: Languages of Africa

text: The earliest Afroasiatic languages are associated with the Capsian culture, the Nilo-Saharan languages are linked with the Khartoum Mesolithic/Neolithic, the Niger-Congo languages are correlated with the west and central African hoe-based farming traditions and the Khoisan languages are matched with the south and southeastern Wilton industries. More broadly, the Afroasiatic family is tentatively grouped within the Nostratic superfamily, and the Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo phyla form the Niger-Saharan macrophylum.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Afroasiatic languages are spoken throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia and parts of the Sahel. There are approximately 375 Afroasiatic languages spoken by over 400 million people. The main subfamilies of Afroasiatic are Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic, Egyptian and Semitic. The Afroasiatic Urheimat is uncertain. The family's most extensive branch, the Semitic languages (including Arabic, Amharic and Hebrew among others), is the only branch of Afroasiatic that is spoken outside Africa.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Some of the most widely spoken Afroasiatic languages include Arabic (a Semitic language, and a recent arrival from West Asia), Somali (Cushitic), Berber (Berber), Hausa (Chadic), Amharic (Semitic) and Oromo (Cushitic). Of the world's surviving language families, Afroasiatic has the longest written history, as both the Akkadian language of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egyptian are members.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Nilo-Saharan languages consist of a hundred diverse languages. The proposed family has a speech area that stretches from the Nile Valley to northern Tanzania and into Nigeria and DR Congo, with the Songhay languages along the middle reaches of the Niger River as a geographic outlier. Genetic linkage between these languages has not been conclusively demonstrated, and among linguists, support for the proposal is sparse. The languages share some unusual morphology, but if they are related, most of the branches must have undergone major restructuring since diverging from their common ancestor. The inclusion of the Songhay languages is questionable, and doubts have been raised over the Koman, Gumuz and Kadu branches.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Some of the better known Nilo-Saharan languages are Kanuri, Fur, Songhay, Nobiin and the widespread Nilotic family, which includes the Luo, Dinka and Maasai. The Nilo-Saharan languages are tonal.


title: Languages of Africa

text: The Niger–Congo languages constitute the largest language family spoken in West Africa and perhaps the world in terms of the number of languages. One of its salient features is an elaborate noun class system with grammatical concord. A large majority of languages of this family are tonal such as Yoruba and Igbo, Akan and Ewe language. A major branch of Niger–Congo languages is the Bantu phylum, which has a wider speech area than the rest of the family (see Niger–Congo B (Bantu) in the map above).


title: Languages of Africa

text: The Niger–Kordofanian language family, joining Niger–Congo with the Kordofanian languages of south-central Sudan, was proposed in the 1950s by Joseph Greenberg. Today, linguists often use "Niger–Congo" to refer to this entire family, including Kordofanian as a subfamily. One reason for this is that it is not clear whether Kordofanian was the first branch to diverge from rest of Niger–Congo. Mande has been claimed to be equally or more divergent. Niger–Congo is generally accepted by linguists, though a few question the inclusion of Mande and Dogon, and there is no conclusive evidence for the inclusion of Ubangian.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Several languages spoken in Africa belong to language families concentrated or originating outside the African continent.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Malagasy belongs to the Austronesian languages and is the westernmost branch of the family. It is the national and co-official language of Madagascar and one of Malagasy dialects called Bushi is also spoken in Mayotte.


title: Languages of Africa

text: The ancestors of the Malagasy people migrated to Madagascar around 1,500 years ago from Southeast Asia, more specifically the island of Borneo. The origins of how they arrived to Madagascar remains a mystery, however the Austronesians are known for their seafaring culture. Despite the geographical isolation, Malagasy still has strong resemblance to Barito languages especially the Ma'anyan language of southern Borneo.


title: Languages of Africa

text: With more than 20 million speakers, Malagasy is one of the most widely spoken of the Austronesian languages.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Afrikaans is Indo-European, as is most of the vocabulary of most African creole languages. Afrikaans evolved from the Dutch vernacular of South Holland (Hollandic dialect) spoken by the mainly Dutch settlers of what is now South Africa, where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics in the course of the 18th century, including the loss of verbal conjugation (save for 5 modal verbs), as well as grammatical case and gender. Most Afrikaans speakers live in South Africa. In Namibia it is the lingua franca. Overall 15 to 20 million people are estimated to speak Afrikaans.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Since the colonial era, Indo-European languages such as Afrikaans, English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish have held official status in many countries, and are widely spoken, generally as lingua francas. ("See African French and African Portuguese".) German was once used in Germany's colonies there from the late 1800s until World War I, when Britain and France took over and revoked German's official status. Despite this, German is still spoken in Namibia, mostly among the white population. Although it lost its official status in the 1990s, it has been redesignated as a national language. Indian languages such as Gujarati are spoken by South Asian expatriates exclusively. In earlier historical times, other Indo-European languages could be found in various parts of the continent, such as Old Persian and Greek in Egypt, Latin and Vandalic in North Africa and Modern Persian in the Horn of Africa.


title: Languages of Africa

text: The three small Khoisan families of southern Africa have not been shown to be closely related to any other major language family. In addition, there are various other families that have not been demonstrated to belong to one of these families. (The questionable branches of Nilo-Saharan were covered above, and are not repeated here.)


title: Languages of Africa

text: "Khoisan" is a term of convenience covering some 30 languages spoken by around 300,000–400,000 people. There are five Khoisan families that have not been shown to be related to each other: Khoe, Tuu and Kx’a, which are found mainly in Namibia and Botswana, as well as Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania, which are language isolates. A striking feature of Khoisan languages, and the reason they are often grouped together, is their use of click consonants. Some neighbouring Bantu languages (notably Xhosa and Zulu) have clicks as well, but these were adopted from Khoisan languages. The Khoisan languages are also tonal.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Due partly to its multilingualism and its colonial past, a substantial proportion of the world's creole languages are to be found in Africa. Some are based on Indo-European languages (e.g. Krio from English in Sierra Leone and the very similar Pidgin in Nigeria, Ghana and parts of Cameroon; Cape Verdean Creole in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau Creole in Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, all from Portuguese; Seychellois Creole in the Seychelles and Mauritian Creole in Mauritius, both from French); some are based on Arabic (e.g. Juba Arabic in the southern Sudan, or Nubi in parts of Uganda and Kenya); some are based on local languages (e.g. Sango, the main language of the Central African Republic); while in Cameroon a creole based on French, English and local African languages known as Camfranglais has started to become popular.


title: Languages of Africa

text: A fair number of unclassified languages are reported in Africa. Many remain unclassified simply for lack of data; among the better-investigated ones that continue to resist easy classification are:


title: Languages of Africa

text: Less-well investigated languages include Irimba, Luo, Mawa, Rer Bare (possibly Bantu), Bete (evidently Jukunoid), Bung (unclear), Kujarge (evidently Chadic), Lufu (Jukunoid), Meroitic (possibly Afroasiatic), Oropom (possibly spurious) and Weyto (evidently Cushitic). Several of these are extinct, and adequate comparative data is thus unlikely to be forthcoming. Hombert & Philippson (2009) list a number of African languages that have been classified as language isolates at one point or another. Many of these are simply unclassified, but Hombert & Philippson believe Africa has about twenty language families, including isolates. Beside the possibilities listed above, there are:


title: Languages of Africa

text: Below is a list of language isolates and otherwise unclassified languages in Africa, from Vossen & Dimmendaal (2020:434):


title: Languages of Africa

text: Many African countries have national sign languages, such as Algerian Sign Language, Tunisian Sign Language, Ethiopian Sign Language. Other sign languages are restricted to small areas or single villages, such as Adamorobe Sign Language in Ghana. Tanzania has seven, one for each of its schools for the Deaf, all of which are discouraged. Not much is known, since little has been published on these languages


title: Languages of Africa

text: Sign language systems extant in Africa include the Paget Gorman Sign System used in Namibia and Angola, the Sudanese Sign languages used in Sudan and South Sudan, the Arab Sign languages used across the Arab Mideast, the Francosign languages used in Francophone Africa and other areas such as Ghana and Tunisia, and the Tanzanian Sign languages used in Tanzania.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Throughout the long multilingual history of the African continent, African languages have been subject to phenomena like language contact, language expansion, language shift and language death. A case in point is the Bantu expansion, in which Bantu-speaking peoples expanded over most of Sub-Equatorial Africa, intermingling with Khoi-San speaking peoples from much of Southeast Africa and Southern Africa and other peoples from Central Africa. Another example is the Arab expansion in the 7th century, which led to the extension of Arabic from its homeland in Asia, into much of North Africa and the Horn of Africa.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Trade languages are another age-old phenomenon in the African linguistic landscape. Cultural and linguistic innovations spread along trade routes and languages of peoples dominant in trade developed into languages of wider communication (lingua franca). Of particular importance in this respect are Berber (North and West Africa), Jula (western West Africa), Fulfulde (West Africa), Hausa (West Africa), Lingala (Congo), Swahili (Southeast Africa), Somali (Horn of Africa) and Arabic (North Africa and Horn of Africa).


title: Languages of Africa

text: After gaining independence, many African countries, in the search for national unity, selected one language, generally the former colonial language, to be used in government and education. However, in recent years, African countries have become increasingly supportive of maintaining linguistic diversity. Language policies that are being developed nowadays are mostly aimed at multilingualism.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Besides the former colonial languages of English, French, Portuguese, Dutch (Afrikaans) and Spanish, the following languages are official at the national level in Africa (non-exhaustive list):


title: Languages of Africa

text: The colonial borders established by European powers following the Berlin Conference in 1884–1885 divided a great many ethnic groups and African language speaking communities. This can cause divergence of a language on either side of a border (especially when the official languages are different), for example, in orthographic standards. Some notable cross-border languages include Berber (which stretches across much of North Africa and some parts of West Africa), Kikongo (that stretches across northern Angola, western and coastal Democratic Republic of the Congo, and western and coastal Republic of the Congo), Somali (stretches across most of the Horn of Africa), Swahili (spoken in the African Great Lakes region), Fula (in the Sahel and West Africa) and Luo (in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan and Sudan).


title: Languages of Africa

text: Some prominent Africans such as former Malian president and former Chairman of the African Commission, Alpha Oumar Konaré, have referred to cross-border languages as a factor that can promote African unity.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Language is not static in Africa any more than on other continents. In addition to the (likely modest) impact of borders, there are also cases of dialect levelling (such as in Igbo and probably many others), koinés (such as N'Ko and possibly Runyakitara) and emergence of new dialects (such as Sheng). In some countries, there are official efforts to develop standardized language versions.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Of the 1 billion Africans (in 2009), about 17 percent speak an Arabic dialect. About 10 percent speak Swahili, the lingua franca of Southeast Africa; about 5 percent speak a Berber dialect; and about 5 percent speak Hausa, which serves as a lingua franca in much of the Sahel. Other important West African languages are Yoruba, Igbo, Akan and Fula. Major Horn of Africa languages are Somali, Amharic and Oromo. Important South African languages are Sotho, Tswana, Pedi, Venda, Tsonga, Swazi, Southern Ndebele, Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans.


title: Languages of Africa

text: English, French and Portuguese are important languages in Africa. About 130 million, 115 million and 35 million Africans, respectively, speak them as either native or secondary languages. Portuguese has become the national language of Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe, and Portuguese is the official language of Mozambique. The economies of Angola and Mozambique are quickly becoming economic powerhouses in Africa. Through (among other factors) sheer demographic weight, Africans are increasingly taking ownership of these three world languages as they are having an ever-greater influence on the research, economic growth and development in the African countries where English, French and Portuguese are spoken.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Some linguistic features are particularly common among languages spoken in Africa, whereas others are less common. Such shared traits probably are not due to a common origin of all African languages. Instead, some may be due to language contact (resulting in borrowing) and specific idioms and phrases may be due to a similar cultural background.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Sounds that are relatively uncommon in African languages include uvular consonants, diphthongs and front rounded vowels


title: Languages of Africa

text: Tonal languages are found throughout the world but are predominantly used in Africa. Both the Nilo-Saharan and the Khoi-San phyla are fully tonal. The large majority of the Niger–Congo languages are also tonal. Tonal languages are also found in the Omotic, Chadic and South & East Cushitic branches of Afroasiatic. The most common type of tonal system opposes two tone levels, High (H) and Low (L). Contour tones do occur, and can often be analysed as two or more tones in succession on a single syllable. "Tone melodies" play an important role, meaning that it is often possible to state significant generalizations by separating tone sequences ("melodies") from the segments that bear them. Tonal sandhi processes like tone spread, tone shift, downstep and downdrift are common in African languages.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Widespread syntactical structures include the common use of adjectival verbs and the expression of comparison by means of a verb 'to surpass'. The Niger–Congo languages have large numbers of genders (noun classes) which cause agreement in verbs and other words. Case, tense and other categories may be distinguished only by tone. Auxiliary verbs are also widespread among African languages; the fusing of subject markers and TAM/polarity auxiliaries into what are known as tense pronouns are more common in auxiliary verb constructions in African languages than in most other parts of the world.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Quite often, only one term is used for both animal and meat; the word "nama" or "nyama" for animal/meat is particularly widespread in otherwise widely divergent African languages.


title: Languages of Africa

text: Below is a list of the major languages of Africa by region, family and total number of primary language speakers in millions.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao () (; 155 – 15 March 220), courtesy name Mengde (), was a Chinese statesman, warlord and poet. He was the penultimate grand chancellor of the Eastern Han dynasty, and he amassed immense power in the dynasty's final years. As one of the central figures of the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao laid the foundations for what became the state of Cao Wei, and he was posthumously honoured as "Emperor Wu of Wei", despite the fact that he never officially proclaimed himself Emperor of China or Son of Heaven. Cao Cao remains a controversial historical figure—he is often portrayed as a cruel and merciless tyrant in literature, but he has also been praised as a brilliant ruler, military genius, and great poet possessing unrivalled charisma, who treated his subordinates like family.


title: Cao Cao

text: During the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty, Cao Cao was able to secure most of northern China—which was at the time the most populated and developed part of China. Cao Cao was also very successful in restoring public order and rebuilding the economy as the grand chancellor. However, his manipulation of Emperor Xian as a puppet and figurehead was heavily criticised, as state affairs were effectively controlled by Cao Cao instead of the emperor himself. Opposition gathered around the warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan, whom Cao Cao was unable to quell.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao was highly skilled in poetry, calligraphy, martial arts and military strategy. He wrote many war journals, including commentary on "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao was born in Qiao, Principality of Pei (present-day Bozhou, Anhui), in 155. His father Cao Song was a foster son of Cao Teng, who in turn was one of the favourite eunuchs of Emperor Huan. Some historical records, including the "Biography of Cao Man", claim that Cao Song's original family name was Xiahou and that he was thus a relative of Xiahou Dun.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao was known for his craftiness as an adolescent. According to the "Biography of Cao Man", Cao Cao's uncle complained to Cao Song about Cao Cao's indulgence in hunting and music with Yuan Shao. In retaliation, Cao Cao feigned a fit before his uncle, who immediately rushed to inform Cao Song. When Cao Song went to see his son, Cao Cao behaved normally. When asked, Cao Cao replied, "I have never had a fit, but I lost the love of my uncle, and therefore he deceived you." Afterwards, Cao Song ceased to believe his brother regarding Cao Cao, and thus Cao Cao became even more blatant and insistent in his wayward pursuits.


title: Cao Cao

text: At that time, there was a man named Xu Shao who lived in Runan and was famous for his ability to evaluate a person's potentials and talents. Cao Cao paid him a visit in hopes of receiving an evaluation that would help him politically. At first, Xu Shao refused to make a statement; however, under persistent questioning, he finally said, "You would be a capable minister in peaceful times and an unscrupulous hero in chaotic times." Cao Cao laughed and left. There are two other versions of this comment in other unofficial historical records.


title: Cao Cao

text: At the age of 20, Cao Cao was appointed district captain of Luoyang. Upon taking up the post, he placed rows of multicolored stakes outside his office and ordered his deputies to flog those who violated the law, regardless of their status. An uncle of Jian Shuo, one of the most powerful and influential eunuchs under Emperor Ling, was caught walking in the city after the evening curfew by Cao Cao's men and was flogged. This prompted Jian Shuo and other higher authorities to ostensibly promote Cao Cao to the post of governor of Dunqiu County while actually moving him out of the imperial capital. Cao Cao remained in this position for little more than a year, being dismissed from office in 178 for his distant family ties with the disgraced Empress Song. Around 180, Cao Cao returned to court as a Consultant () and presented two memoranda against the eunuchs' influence in court and government corruption during his tenure, to limited effect.


title: Cao Cao

text: When the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out in 184, Cao Cao was recalled to Luoyang and appointed Captain of the Cavalry () and sent to Yingchuan in Yu Province to suppress the rebels. He was successful and was sent to Jinan as Chancellor () to prevent the spread of Yellow Turban influence there. In Jinan, Cao Cao aggressively enforced the ban on unorthodox cults, destroyed shrines, and supported state Confucianism. He offended the local leading families in the process, and resigned on grounds of poor health around 187, fearing that he had put his family in danger. He was offered the post of Administrator of Dong Commandery (), but he declined and returned to his home in Pei County. Around that time, Wang Fen () tried to recruit Cao Cao to join his coup to replace Emperor Ling with the Marquis of Hefei, but Cao Cao refused. The plot came to nothing, and Wang Fen killed himself.


title: Cao Cao

text: After 18 months in retirement, Cao Cao returned to the capital Luoyang in 188. That year, he was appointed Colonel Who Arranges the Army (), fourth of eight heads of a newly established imperial army, the Army of the Western Garden. The effectiveness of this new force was never tested, since it was disbanded the very next year.


title: Cao Cao

text: In 189, Emperor Ling died and was succeeded by his eldest son (Emperor Shao), although state power was mainly controlled by Empress Dowager He and her advisors. The empress dowager's brother, General-in-Chief He Jin, plotted with Yuan Shao to eliminate the Ten Attendants (a group of influential eunuchs in the imperial court). He Jin summoned Dong Zhuo, a seasoned general of Liang Province, to lead an army into Luoyang to pressure the empress dowager to surrender power, braving accusations of Dong's "infamy". But before Dong Zhuo arrived, He Jin was assassinated by the eunuchs and Luoyang was thrown into chaos as Yuan Shao's supporters fought the eunuchs. Dong Zhuo's army easily rid the palace grounds of opposition. After he deposed Emperor Shao, Dong Zhuo placed the puppet Emperor Xian on the throne, since he deemed that Emperor Xian was more capable than the original puppet Emperor Shao.


title: Cao Cao

text: After rejecting Dong Zhuo's offer of appointment, Cao Cao left Luoyang for Chenliu (southeast of present-day Kaifeng, Henan, Cao's hometown), where he built an army. The next year, regional warlords formed a military alliance under Yuan Shao against Dong. Cao Cao joined them, becoming one of the few active fighting members of the coalition. Although the warlords liberated the capital of Luoyang, Dong Zhuo's court managed to flee westwards to the former capital of Chang'an, abducting Emperor Xian. The coalition fell apart after months of inactivity, and China fell into civil war while Dong Zhuo was killed in 192 by Lü Bu.


title: Cao Cao

text: Through short-term and regional-scale wars, Cao Cao continued to expand his power. In 191, Cao Cao was appointed Administrator of Dong commandery (Dongjun) in Chenliu. This happened after he successfully fought against the bandit chieftain Bo Rao, and Yuan Shao named him Administrator in the stead of the ineffectual Wang Hong. He cleared Dong of bandits, and when the Inspector of Yan Province Liu Dai died the following year, he was invited by Bao Xin and other officers to become the Governor of Yan Province, and deal with an uprising of Yellow Turbans in Qing Province who raided Yan. Despite several setbacks, Cao Cao managed to subdue the rebels by the end of 192, likely through negotiations, and added their 30,000 troops to his army. In early 193, Cao Cao and Yuan Shao fought against the latter's cousin Yuan Shu in several battles such as Fengqiu, driving him away to the River Huai.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao's father Cao Song was killed in autumn 193 by troops of Tao Qian, governor of Xu Province (who claimed to be innocent, and that Cao Song's murderers had been mutineers). Enraged, Cao Cao massacred thousands of civilians in Xu during two punitive expeditions in 193 and 194, to avenge his father. Because he took the bulk of his soldiers to Xu Province in order to defeat Tao Qian, most of his territory was left undefended. A number of discontented officers led by Chen Gong and Zhang Chao plotted to rebel. They convinced Zhang Miao (Zhang Chao's brother) to be their leader, and to ask Lü Bu to come with reinforcements. Chen Gong invited Lü Bu to be the new Inspector of Yan province. Lü Bu accepted this invitation and led his soldiers into the province. Since Cao Cao's army was away, many of the local commanders figured that fighting would be a lost cause and surrendered to Lü Bu as soon as he arrived. However three counties – Juancheng, Dong'a, and Fan, remained loyal to Cao Cao and when Cao Cao returned, he gathered his own forces at Juancheng.


title: Cao Cao

text: Throughout 194 and 195, Cao Cao and Lü Bu fought several battles of some size for the control of Yan Province. Though Lü Bu initially did well in holding Puyang, Cao Cao won almost every engagement outside of Puyang. Cao Cao's decisive victory came in a battle near Dongming. Lü Bu and Chen Gong led a large army to assault Cao Cao's forces. At that time, Cao Cao was out with a small army, harvesting grain. Seeing Lü Bu and Chen Gong approaching, Cao Cao hid his soldiers in some woods and behind a dam. He then sent a small force ahead to skirmish with Lü Bu's army. Once the two forces were committed, he unleashed his hidden soldiers. Lü Bu's army was devastated by this attack and many of his soldiers fled.


title: Cao Cao

text: Lü Bu and Chen Gong both fled after that battle. Since Xu province was now under Liu Bei's command and Liu Bei had been Cao Cao's enemy in the past, they fled to Xu for safety. Cao Cao decided not to pursue them and instead set about crushing Lü Bu's loyalists in Yan, consolidating his hold over that province. Eighteen months after the rebellion started, Cao had destroyed Zhang Miao and his family, and regained Yan Province by the end of 195.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao moved his headquarters in early 196 from Puyang to Xu City (許, present-day Xuchang), where he built military agricultural colonies for the settlement of refugees and supply of food for his troops.


title: Cao Cao

text: Around August 196, Emperor Xian returned to Luoyang under the escort of Yang Feng and Dong Cheng. Cao Cao joined Emperor Xian in autumn 196 and convinced him to move the capital to Xu City as suggested by Xun Yu and other advisors, as Luoyang was ruined by war and Chang'an was not under Cao's military control. He was appointed Minister of Works (after negotiating with his nominal superior Yuan Shao), and Director of Retainers (司隸 Sīlì), granting him nominal control over Sili Province. Furthermore, he became General-in-Chief (大將軍) and Marquis of Wuping (武平侯), though both titles had little practical application. While some viewed the emperor as a puppet under Cao Cao's control, Cao adhered to a strict personal code until his death that he would not usurp the throne. When he was approached by his advisors to overthrow the Han dynasty and start his own dynasty, he replied, "If heaven bestows such a fate upon me, let me be King Wen of Zhou."


title: Cao Cao

text: To maintain a good relationship with Yuan Shao, who had become the most powerful warlord in China when he united the northern four provinces, Cao Cao lobbied to have Yuan appointed Minister of Works. However, this had the opposite effect, as Yuan Shao believed that Cao Cao was trying to humiliate him, since Minister of Works technically ranked lower than General-in-Chief, and therefore refused to accept the title. To pacify Yuan Shao, Cao Cao offered his own position to him, while becoming Minister of Works himself. While this temporarily resolved the conflict, it was the catalyst for the Battle of Guandu later.


title: Cao Cao

text: Liu Biao was a major power at that time, holding all of Jing province. Jing had always been prosperous, but its population had grown in size because many people fled from the northern wars and sought refuge there. Therefore, Liu Biao constituted a danger to Cao Cao. Zhang Xiu commanded Liu Biao's territory on the border with Cao Cao, so Cao Cao went to attack him. In early 197 Zhang Xiu surrendered to Cao Cao, but later attacked his camp in the night (the Battle of Wancheng), killing many people, including Cao Cao's son Cao Ang, and forcing Cao Cao to flee.


title: Cao Cao

text: After taking a few months to recover, Cao Cao turned his attention to Yuan Shu, who had recently proclaimed himself emperor of his new Zhong dynasty. In the name of restoring the Han dynasty, Cao Cao and other warlords formed a coalition against Yuan Shu, and Cao Cao seized all Yuan Shu's holdings north of the Huai River in the autumn of 197, while the latter's remaining territory suffered drought and a bad harvest, further decreasing his power.


title: Cao Cao

text: Later in 197, Cao Cao returned south to attack Liu Biao/Zhang Xiu once more. This time, Cao Cao was very successful and greatly damaged their army. Cao Cao attacked Zhang Xiu again in 198 leading to the Battle of Rangcheng and was again victorious. He ultimately retreated from this campaign because he received word that Yuan Shao was planning to march on Xu, though this report turned out to be in error.


title: Cao Cao

text: In April 198, Cao Cao sent envoys to incite the western warlords to attack Chang'an, still controlled by Dong Zhuo's successor Li Jue. One of Li Jue's subordinates, Duan Wei (), mutinied and killed Li Jue along with his family in the summer of 198. Duan Wei sent Li Jue's head to Xu City (as a token of his submission to Cao Cao).


title: Cao Cao

text: Meanwhile, Lü Bu was growing more aggressive. He drove Liu Bei (who fled to Cao Cao) out of his territory again and allied with Yuan Shu. Since Zhang Xiu had recently been crushed, he was in no position to be a threat in the south, so Cao Cao went east to deal with Lü Bu.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao defeated Lü Bu in numerous battles and eventually surrounded him at Xiapi. Lü Bu tried to break free but could not do so. Ultimately, many of his officers and soldiers defected to Cao Cao. Some were kidnapped by defectors. Lü Bu grew disheartened and surrendered to Cao Cao, who executed him on 7 February 199. By eliminating Lü Bu, Cao had obtained effective control of Xu Province.


title: Cao Cao

text: With Lü Bu gone, Cao Cao set about dealing with Yuan Shu. He sent Liu Bei and Zhu Ling south to attack Yuan Shu. However, the rebel emperor died in the summer of 199 before Liu Bei and the others arrived. This meant Cao Cao had no major opponents in the Huai River region (Yu Province) anymore either. Meanwhile, in March 199 Yuan Shao had finally finished his war with Gongsun Zan at the Battle of Yijing, and was now planning to move south to defeat Cao Cao. Seeing this, Cao Cao set about preparing his defenses, intending to make his stand at Guandu. On the advice of Jia Xu, Zhang Xiu surrendered to Cao Cao and his forces were integrated into Cao Cao's army after they rejected an envoy from Yuan Shao to ally.


title: Cao Cao

text: Near the end of the year 199, Liu Bei betrayed Cao Cao and killed his commanders in Xu Province, claiming to own the province. Cao Cao wanted to attack Liu Bei quickly so as to not get into a two-front war. While some in the court were worried that Yuan Shao would attack them soon if the main army were east, Guo Jia assured Cao Cao that Yuan Shao would be slow to react, and that Cao Cao could handle Liu Bei if he did it quickly. So on Guo Jia's advice, Cao Cao attacked Liu Bei and utterly defeated him in Xu Province, capturing Guan Yu as well as Liu Bei's family members at the start of 200. Liu Bei himself fled to Yuan Shao, who only sent a part of his army to make an attack on Cao Cao. This incursion was stopped by Yu Jin at the Battle of Dushi Ford in February 200, marking the outbreak of open warfare between Cao and Yuan.


title: Cao Cao

text: In 200, Yuan Shao marched southwards on Xu City in the name of rescuing the emperor. He had amassed more than 110,000 troops, including 10,000 heavy cavalry, while Cao Cao gathered around 40,000 men, most of which he concentrated at Guandu, a strategic point on the Yellow River. Cao's army repeatedly repulsed Yuan's attacks and won tactical victories at Dushi Ford (February), Boma (March–May) and Yan Ford (May–August). The two armies came to a standstill at the Battle of Guandu (September–November), as neither side was able to make much progress. Cao Cao's lack of men did not allow him to make significant attacks, and Yuan Shao's pride forced him to meet Cao's force head-on. Despite his overwhelming advantage in terms of manpower, Yuan Shao was unable to make full use of his resources because of his indecisive leadership and Cao Cao's position.


title: Cao Cao

text: Besides the middle battleground of Guandu, two lines of battle were present. The eastern line with Yuan Tan of Yuan Shao's army against Zang Ba of Cao Cao's army was a one-sided battle in favour of Cao, as Yuan Tan's poor leadership was no match for Zang's local knowledge of the landscape and his hit-and-run tactics. On the western front, Yuan Shao's nephew, Gao Gan, performed better against Cao Cao's army and forced several reinforcements from Cao's main camp to maintain the western battle. Liu Bei, then a guest in Yuan Shao's army, suggested that he instigate rebellion in Cao Cao's territories as many followers of Yuan were in Cao's lands. The tactic was initially successful but Man Chong's diplomatic skills helped to resolve the conflict almost immediately. Man Chong had been placed as an official there for this specific reason, as Cao Cao had foreseen the possibility of insurrection prior to the battle. A Cao raid destroying the Yuan supply depot at the village of Gushi forced Yuan Shao to set up an emergency supply depot at Wuchao. Finally in the 10th month, a defector from Yuan Shao's army, Xu You, informed Cao Cao of the location of Yuan's new supply depot. Cao Cao broke the stalemate by sending a special group of soldiers to Wuchao burn all the supplies of Yuan Shao's army, heavily demoralising it. Yuan performed a final, costly and ultimately failed storming of Guandu, and the next morning Cao launched a devastating surprise attack on the retreating enemy army, thus winning a decisive and seemingly impossible victory. In a report to Emperor Xian, Cao Cao claimed to have killed more than 70,000 of Yuan Shao's original 110,000 troops; he later ordered most captured enemy soldiers to be buried alive. A few months later, in May or June 201, Cao Cao defeated Yuan Shao again in the Battle of Cangting, eliminating the latter's last units south of the Yellow River.


title: Cao Cao

text: Yuan Shao fell ill shortly after the defeat, and died in June 202, leaving three sons and no formally appointed successor. Although he seems to have favoured his youngest son Yuan Shang (controlling Ji Province) as his heir, his oldest son Yuan Tan (governor of Qing Province) challenged him and the two brothers entered into a war of succession, as they fought Cao Cao. Cao Cao used the internal conflict within the Yuan clan to his advantage, and during the Battle of Liyang (October 202 – June 203), he drove the Yuans back to their stronghold at Ye (under Yuan Shang's control). He then withdrew, consolidating his territorial gains rather than completing his conquest; possibly, dissidents at the imperial court in Xu required his attention. Temporarily relieved from Cao Cao's pressure, the fraternal feud escalated and Yuan Shang besieged Yuan Tan's base at Pingyuan (), forcing the latter to conclude a marriage alliance with Cao Cao. The province of Ji fell to Cao Cao in the summer of 204 after the five month long Siege of Ye. Cao Cao paid his respects at Yuan Shao's tomb after conquering Ye, weeping bitterly for his old friend in front of his followers and giving Yuan Shao's family consolatory gifts and a government pension. Yuan Shang fled north to the third son, governor Yuan Xi of You Province, while Gao Gan, governor of Bing Province, defected to Cao Cao. In January and February 205, Cao Cao turned on the disloyal Yuan Tan, defeated and killed him in the Battle of Nanpi, and conquered Qing Province. Gao Gan rebelled in 205, but in 206 Cao Cao defeated and killed him, annexing Bing definitively.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao assumed effective rule over all of northern China. Suffering mutiny amongst their own troops, Yuan Shang and Yuan Xi fled to the Wuhuan chieftains for aid. The Wuhuan chieftain Tadun assisted the Yuan brothers and started raiding Cao's territory. In 207, Cao Cao led a daring campaign beyond Chinese borders in hopes of destroying the Yuans once and for all. He fought an alliance of Wuhuan chieftains at the Battle of White Wolf Mountain. Though outnumbered and isolated, Cao Cao emerged victorious due to cleverly engineering his supply lines by digging two new canals and flanking the enemy, killing Tadun and forcing the Yuans to flee once again. This time, they went to Gongsun Kang for help, but he executed them and sent their heads to Cao Cao, granting him nominal control over You Province. Meanwhile, the northern tribes were now terrified of Cao Cao. Most of the remaining Wuhuan submitted to him, along with the Xianbei and Xiongnu.


title: Cao Cao

text: After Yuan Shao's defeat at Guandu in 200, Cao Cao forced Liu Bei to flee to the governor of Jing Province, Liu Biao, who stationed him at the northern border in Xinye County to keep Cao Cao at bay. An initial Cao attack on Liu Bei was repelled during the Battle of Bowang (202). After completing his conquest of northern China in 207, Cao Cao turned his full attention to Jing Province, where a succession dispute erupted after the death of Liu Biao in August 208. Liu Biao's chosen heir was his younger son Liu Cong, but his elder son Liu Qi challenged him for the governorship, while Sun Quan attacked the eastern territories of Jing, Liu Bei hoped to usurp Jing for himself, and Cao Cao moved to invade Jing from the north with a hastily assembled army in September. Cao Cao's action proved to be decisive: Liu Cong surrendered to him without a fight, while Liu Bei fled south, but was slowed down by a large following of refugees. Cao Cao's 5,000 elite cavalry force caught up with Liu Bei and utterly defeated him at the Battle of Changban in October, capturing the baggage train and refugee column. Liu Bei himself narrowly escaped east with a handful of companions, linked up with Liu Qi at Fankou and sent Zhuge Liang to negotiate an alliance with Sun Quan, who eventually agreed to join forces. Cao Cao gained control of a large portion of the Yangtze river by occupying the Jiangling naval base, and ordered most of his army to sail down the river towards Chibi (Red Cliffs), while the rest marched over land, to defeat the newly forged alliance in one swift stroke.


title: Cao Cao

text: At the Battle of Red Cliffs in the winter of 208, Cao Cao's forces were defeated by the coalition of Liu Bei and Sun Quan (who later founded the states of Shu Han and Eastern Wu respectively, becoming his arch-rivals in reunifying China). Despite superior numbers, the northern troops were exhausted from marching, prone to sickness in the unfamiliar southern climate and seasick on the river fleet (which they tried to mitigate by chaining the ships together), while especially the Sun soldiers were still fresh and experienced in riverine warfare. Allied general Huang Gai pretended to defect to the northerners, but took advantage of the fact that the Cao ships had been chained together to destroy them with fire ships. Meanwhile, an allied amphibious attack led by Zhou Yu routed Cao Cao's land forces at Wulin ().


title: Cao Cao

text: Throughout 209 and 210, Cao Cao's commanders were engaged in defensive efforts against Sun Quan. In battles at Jiangling and Yiling, Cao Cao's commanders in northern Jing (such as Cao Ren) fought against Sun Quan. They experienced mixed success, and Cao Cao was able to retain some territory in the north of that province. At the same time, they held off an attack on Hefei and put down a revolt in Lu that Sun Quan's forces tried to assist, keeping Sun Quan from moving to attack Shouchun. However, Cao Cao's commanders in southern Jing, cut off from the rest of Cao Cao's forces, surrendered to Liu Bei. Liu Qi initially succeeded his father as Inspector of Jing Province, but died in 209, after which Sun Quan appointed Liu Bei as Governor of Jing Province, and married off his sister Lady Sun to him to cement the alliance.


title: Cao Cao

text: By 211, the situation in the south had stabilized and Cao Cao decided to crush his remaining enemies in the north, to the west of Chang'an (in Zuopingyi Commandery). In Hanzhong commandery on the Han River, in the north of Yi Province, Zhang Lu lived in revolt against the Han dynasty, running his own theocratic state. Cao Cao sent Zhong Yao with an army to force Zhang Lu's surrender. However, this disturbed a number of warlords in the Wei River valley and the wider Liang Province, who united under Han Sui and Ma Chao to oppose Cao Cao, believing that his maneuvers against Zhang Lu were actually directed at them. Cao Cao personally led the army against this alliance, and outmaneuvered the rebel army at every turn in the Battle of Tong Pass. The alliance shattered and many of the leaders were killed. Cao Cao spent the next month or two hunting down some of the leaders, many of whom surrendered to him. He left Xiahou Yuan to clear up affairs in the region and returned home in 212. In 213, he launched an invasion into Sun Quan's territory across the river Huai, but was defeated in the Battle of Ruxu, which confirmed Sun's control of the south.


title: Cao Cao

text: In 213, Cao Cao received the title "Duke of Wei" () and was given the nine bestowments and a fief of ten cities under his domain, known as Wei. That same year, he marched south and attacked Ruxu. Sun Quan's general Lü Meng held off the attacks for about a month, and Cao Cao had to pull back in the end. In 215, Cao Cao moved into and took over Hanzhong. In 216, Cao Cao was promoted to the status of a vassal king – "King of Wei" (). Over the years, Cao Cao, as well as Liu Bei and Sun Quan, continued to consolidate their power in their respective regions. Through many wars, China became divided into three powers – Wei, Shu and Wu, which fought sporadic battles without the balance tipping significantly in anyone's favour. The only exception was when Liu Bei's forces were able to take Hanzhong from Cao Cao's army after a campaign that took two years.


title: Cao Cao

text: In 220, Cao Cao died in Luoyang at the age of 65, having failed to unify China under his rule, allegedly of a "head disease". His will instructed that he be buried near Ximen Bao's tomb in Ye without gold and jade treasures, and that his subjects on duty at the frontier were to stay in their posts and not attend the funeral as, in his own words, "the country is still unstable".


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao's eldest surviving son Cao Pi succeeded him. Within a year, Cao Pi forced Emperor Xian to abdicate and proclaimed himself the first emperor of the state of Cao Wei. Cao Cao was then posthumously titled "Grand Ancestor Emperor Wu of Wei" ().


title: Cao Cao

text: While historical records indicate Cao Cao as a brilliant ruler, he was represented as a cunning and deceitful man in Chinese opera, where his character is given a white facial makeup to reflect his treacherous personality. When Luo Guanzhong wrote the historical novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", he took much of his inspiration from Chinese opera.


title: Cao Cao

text: As a result, depictions of Cao Cao as unscrupulous have become much more popular among the common people than his real image. There have been attempts to revise this depiction.


title: Cao Cao

text: As the novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" has been adapted to modern forms of entertainment, so has its portrayal of Cao Cao. Given the source material upon which these adaptations are founded, Cao Cao continues to be characterised as a prominent villain.


title: Cao Cao

text: Through to modern times, the Chinese equivalent of the English idiom "speak of the Devil" is "speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao arrives" ().


title: Cao Cao

text: After the Communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, some people in China thought there might be some similarities between Cao Cao and Mao Zedong. In 1959, Peng Dehuai wrote a letter to Mao, in which he compared himself to Zhang Fei: because Mao Zedong compares himself to Cao Cao, Peng's comparison implied that he had an intuitively confrontational relationship with Mao. Mao had the letter widely circulated in order to make Peng's attitude clear to other Party members, and proceeded to purge Peng, eventually ending Peng's career.


title: Cao Cao

text: "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", a historical novel composed by Luo Guanzhong in the 14th century (11 centuries after Cao Cao's death), was a romanticisation of the events that occurred in the late Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period. While adhering to historical facts most of the time, the novel inevitably reshaped Cao Cao to some extent, so as to portray him as a cruel and suspicious villain. In some chapters, Luo created fictional or semi-fictional events involving Cao Cao.


title: Cao Cao

text: While waging military campaigns against his enemies, Cao Cao did not forget the basis of society – agriculture and education.


title: Cao Cao

text: In 194, a locust plague caused a major famine across China. The people resorted to cannibalism out of desperation. Without food, many armies were defeated without fighting. From this experience, Cao Cao saw the importance of an ample food supply in building a strong military. He began a series of agricultural programs in cities such as Xu City and Chenliu. Refugees were recruited and given wasteland to cultivate. Later, encampments not faced with imminent danger of war were also made to farm. This system was continued and spread to all regions under Cao Cao as his realm expanded. Although Cao Cao's primary intention was to build a powerful army, the agricultural program also improved the living standards of the people, especially war refugees.


title: Cao Cao

text: By 203, Cao Cao had eliminated most of Yuan Shao's forces. This afforded him more attention on construction within his realm. In autumn of that year, Cao Cao passed an order decreeing the promotion of education throughout the counties and cities within his jurisdiction. An official in charge of education was assigned to each county with more than 500 households. Youngsters with potential and talent were selected for schooling. This prevented a lapse in the training of intellectuals in those years of war, and, in Cao Cao's words, would benefit the people.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao was an accomplished poet, as were his sons Cao Pi and Cao Zhi. He was also a patron of poets such as Xu Gan. Of Cao Cao's works, only a remnant remain today. His verses, unpretentious yet profound, helped to reshape the poetic style of his time and beyond, eventually contributing to the poetry styles associated with Tang dynasty poetry. Cao Cao, Cao Pi and Cao Zhi are known collectively as the "Three Caos". The Three Caos' poetry, together with additional poets, became known as the "Jian'an" style, which contributed eventually to Tang and later poetry. Cao Cao also wrote verse in the older four-character per line style characteristic of the "Classic of Poetry". Burton Watson describes Cao Cao as: "the only writer of the period who succeeded in infusing the old four-character metre with any vitality, mainly because he discarded the archaic diction associated with it and employed the ordinary poetic language of his time." Cao Cao is also known for his early contributions to the Shanshui poetry genre, with his 4-character-per-line, 14-line poem "View of the Blue Sea" (觀滄海).


title: Cao Cao

text: On 27 December 2009, the Henan Provincial Cultural Heritage Bureau reported the discovery of Cao Cao's tomb in Xigaoxue Village, Anyang County, Henan. The tomb, covering an area of 740 square metres, was discovered in December 2008 when workers at a nearby kiln were digging for mud to make bricks. Its discovery was not reported and the local authorities knew of it only when they seized a stone tablet carrying the inscription 'King Wu of Wei' — Cao Cao's posthumous title — from grave robbers who claimed to have stolen it from the tomb. Over the following year, archaeologists recovered more than 250 relics from the tomb. The remains of three persons — a man in his 60s, a woman in her 50s and another woman in her 20s — were also unearthed and are believed to be those of Cao Cao, one of his wives, and a servant.


title: Cao Cao

text: Since the discovery of the tomb, there have been many skeptics and experts who pointed out problems with it and raised doubts about its authenticity. In January 2010, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage legally endorsed the initial results from research conducted throughout 2009 suggesting that the tomb was Cao Cao's. However, in August 2010, 23 experts and scholars presented evidence at a forum held in Suzhou, Jiangsu to argue that the findings and the artifacts of the tomb were fake. In September 2010, an article published in an archaeology magazine claimed that the tomb and the adjacent one actually belonged to Cao Huan (a grandson of Cao Cao) and his father Cao Yu.


title: Cao Cao

text: In 2010, the tomb became part of the fifth batch of Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level in China. , it has been announced that the local government in Anyang is constructing a museum on the original site of the tomb which will be named 'Cao Cao Mausoleum Museum' ().


title: Cao Cao

text: Media reports from 2018 describe the tomb complex as having an outer rammed earth foundation, a spirit way, and structures on the east and south sides. Archaeologists have also noted that the tomb's exterior and perimeter appear to be deliberately left unmarked; there are neither structures above the ground around the tomb nor massive piles of debris in the vicinity. This indirectly confirms historical records that Cao Pi had ordered the monuments on the surface to be systematically dismantled to honour his father's wishes to be buried in a simple manner in a concealed location, as well as to prevent tomb robbers from finding and looting the tomb.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao was a purported descendant of the Western Han dynasty chancellor Cao Shen. In the early 2010s, researchers from Fudan University compared the Y chromosomes collected from a tooth from Cao Cao's granduncle, Cao Ding (), with those of Cao Shen and found them to be significantly different. Therefore, the claim about Cao Cao descending from Cao Shen was not supported by genetic evidence. The researchers also found that the Y chromosomes of Cao Ding match those of self-proclaimed living descendants of Cao Cao who hold lineage records dating back to more than 100 generations ago.


title: Cao Cao

text: Zhu Ziyan, a history professor from Shanghai University, felt that Cao Ding's tooth alone cannot be used as evidence to determine Cao Cao's ancestry. He was sceptical about whether those who claim to be Cao Cao's descendants are really so, because genealogical records dating from the Song dynasty (960–1279) are already so rare in the present day, much less those dating from the Three Kingdoms era (220–280). Besides, according to historical records, Cao Ding was a younger brother of the eunuch Cao Teng, who adopted Cao Cao's biological father, Cao Song. Therefore, Cao Cao had no known blood relations with Cao Ding. In other words, Cao Ding was not Cao Cao's real granduncle (this assuming that there was no intra-family adoption, which was actually common in China). Zhu Ziyan mentioned that Fudan University's research only proves that those self-proclaimed descendants of Cao Cao are related to Cao Ding; it does not directly relate them to Cao Cao.


title: Cao Cao

text: His depiction in “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” led to the common Chinese adage “Speak of Cao-Cao” which is the same as the Western - “speak of the devil, and the devil will appear.”


title: Cao Cao

text: The "Father of Hong Kong cinema", Lai Man-Wai, played Cao Cao in "The Witty Sorcerer", a 1931 comedy film based on the story of Zuo Ci playing tricks on Cao Cao. In the Shaw Brothers film "The Weird Man", Cao Cao was seen in the beginning of the film with Zuo Ci. Zuo Ci was playing tricks on him by giving him a tangerine with no fruit inside. This was later referenced in another film titled "Five Element Ninjas".


title: Cao Cao

text: In the selection of hero cards in the Chinese card game "San Guo Sha" (), there is also a Cao Cao hero that players can select at the beginning of the game.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao is also referenced in "", as the card "Cao Cao, Lord of Wei". This card is black, the colour representing ruthlessness and ambition, though not necessarily evil. It was first printed in "Portal Three Kingdoms" and again in "".


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao appears in Koei's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" video game series. He is also featured as a playable character in Koei's "Dynasty Warriors" and "Warriors Orochi" series. He also features in Koei's "Kessen II" as a playable main character.


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao appears as a Great Person in "Civilization IV" and later as a Great General in "Civilization V".


title: Cao Cao

text: He is also featured as one of the available warlords that the player can choose from in Creative Assembly's game "".


title: Cao Cao

text: Cao Cao is a major character in Capcom's "Tenchi wo Kurau" video game series, all of which were based on the manga of the same name.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: Priscilla Lee Kelly (born June 5, 1997) is an American professional wrestler currently signed to WWE, where she performs on the NXT brand under the ring name Gigi Dolin, and is a member of Toxic Attraction. She is a former record-tying two-time NXT Women's Tag Team Champion with stablemate Jacy Jayne.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: Before signing with WWE, Kelly worked for Major League Wrestling (MLW). She is best known for her appearances in Shine Wrestling, where she is a former Shine Nova Champion.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: Priscilla Lee Kelly was born into a family of Romanichal descent in Douglasville, Georgia, on June 5, 1997. She left school at the age of 12. When she was 14 years old, she took part in the first season of the reality show "My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding", in which she was the main focus of the episode "14 and Looking for Mr. Right". Her younger brother introduced her to professional wrestling.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: Kelly made her professional wrestling debut in March 2015 in a tag team match, where she and Devyn Nicole lost to Amanda Rodriguez and Amber O'Neal. In June, she was defeated by Kiera Hogan. In May 2016, she was defeated by Kimber Lee. In December 2016, she defeated Tessa Blanchard. In September 2016, Kelly made her Women Superstars Uncensored debut where she and Nevaeh lost to Samantha Heights and Brittany Blake. At Breaking Barriers 4, she defeated Penelope Ford and Renee Michelle. In August 2017, she defeated Leva Bates. Later that month, she defended her Shine Nova title against Jordynne Grace. In December, Kelly, Cheerleader Melissa and Mercedes Martinez defeated Laurel Van Ness, Delilah Doom and Deonna Purrazzo. In April 2018, she made her DDT Pro-Wrestling debut where she, Toru Owashi, and Kazuki Hirata were defeated by Saki Akai, Yukio Sakaguchi and Masahiro Takanashi.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: In December 2018, Kelly wrestled a match against Tuna for the Suburban Fight promotion in Los Angeles. During the match, with Tuna laid out on a steel chair, Kelly pulled out a bloody tampon from her tights and stuck it in Tuna's mouth. Footage of the match received little attention for over a week until fellow wrestler Gail Kim commented on Twitter in disgust, after which the footage went viral. Wrestling veterans such as Jim Ross, Angelina Love, and Tessa Blanchard also commented negatively, while Gregory Helms jokingly asked if it was a "First Blood Match". Kelly defended the angle, stating that it took place in a bar that required audience members to be 21 or older and that it was simply for entertainment, confirming that the tampon's use was a scripted event in the match and that it was not actually a used tampon. She later commented that women are held to a double standard compared to men, citing Joey Ryan sticking a lollipop into numerous wrestlers' mouths after pulling it out of his tights. Her sentiments were echoed by Reby Sky. Figures such as Tommy Dreamer, Tazz, and Ryan came to Kelly's defense, all stating that she did her job and it worked. Road Dogg initially criticized her for the angle until Ryan called him out over similar angles during the Attitude Era, notably the infamous Mae Young "birthing a hand" angle, after which he publicly apologized to her.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: In July 2019, Kelly defeated James Ellsworth to become the World Intergender Champion at Cactus League Wrestling's "Rated R Wrestling" event in Tucson, Arizona.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: In November 2019, Kelly debuted for Major League Wrestling as the evil Spider Lady; losing to Zeda Zhang via disqualification and attacking Zhang while unmasking.<ref name="https://www.mandatory.com"></ref>


title: Gigi Dolin

text: In September 2016, Kelly made her Shine Wrestling debut at Shine 37 defeating Dominique Fabiano. Later that night, Kelly and Fabiano were defeated by then Shine Tag Team Champions, Jayme Jameson and Marti Belle. At Shine 39, Kelly was defeated by Malia Hosaka. In July 2017, Kelly became the inaugural Shine Nova Champion after winning the Shine Nova Championship Tournament where she defeated Veda Scott in the first round, Leah Vaughan in the second round, Kiera Hogan in the semi finals, and Candy Cartwright in the tournament finals. At Shine 46, she defeated Santana Garrett to retain the Nova championship. At Shine 49, Kelly lost the Nova title to Candy Cartright. At Shine 51, she defeated Holidead.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: In January 2017, Kelly made her Full Impact Pro debut in a loss to Aria Blake. At Heatstroke 2017, Kelly successfully defended her Shine Nova championship against Stormie Lee.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: Kelly made her debut for the Japanese Promotion Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling in April 2018, losing to the Dragon Bombers (Maho Kurone & Rika Tatsumi) in a Tag Team Match alongside Hyper Misao. She has since worked matches on several occasions in Japan, all under the umbrella of the DDT Pro-Wrestling Promotion, her latest match being a loss in the Tokyo Princess of Princess Championship Match against Miyu Yamashita on October 14. On October 10, 2018, Ethan Page, MAO, Mike Bailey and Kelly defeated Jun Kasai, Akito, Masahiro Takanashi and Saki Akai.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: Kelly made a surprise appearance at All Out, participating in the Casino Battle Royal. She also faced Britt Baker in a losing effort on the January 23 episode of "AEW Dynamite" which was filmed from .


title: Gigi Dolin

text: On July 30, 2018, it was announced that Kelly would be a participant in WWE's second Mae Young Classic. She lost against Deonna Purrazzo in the first round.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: On January 20, 2021, NXT announced they had signed Kelly, where she would be competing under the ring name Gigi Dolin and debut with her participation in the Women's Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. She teamed up with fellow new signee Cora Jade in the tournament, where they faced and lost to The Way (Candice LeRae and Indi Hartwell) in the first round. On the July 27 episode of NXT, Dolin would form an alliance with Mandy Rose and Jacy Jayne, dubbed as Toxic Attraction. At Halloween Havoc, Dolin and Jayne defeated Io Shirai and Zoey Stark, and Indi Hartwell and Persia Pirotta in a triple threat tag team Scareway to Hell Ladder match to win the NXT Women's Tag Team Championship.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: On the NXT Stand & Deliver Kickoff, Gigi and Jacy lost the NXT Women's Tag Team Championship to Dakota Kai and Raquel González with the help from Wendy Choo's interference, ending their reign at 158 days. However, they regained the titles with the help of Mandy Rose's distraction three days later.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: At on July 5, Gigi and Jacy lost the NXT Women's Tag Team Championship to Roxanne Perez and Cora Jade. After the titles were vacated, Gigi and Jacy participated in a Fatal Four-Way Elimination Match on the August 2 episode of NXT 2.0, against Ivy Nile & Tatum Paxley, Yulisa Leon & Valentina Feroz, and Katana Chance & Kayden Carter. Gigi and Jacy were part of the final two teams in the match but eventually lost to Katana & Kayden.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: On the August 19, 2022 episode of SmackDown, Dolin made her main roster debut alongside Jacy Jayne as participants in the WWE Women's Tag Team Championship Tournament. They would win the first match but were forced out of the tournament due to an injury suffered by Dolin. Dolin and Jayne made their return to SmackDown in a losing effort against new WWE Women's Tag Team Champions Aliyah and Raquel Rodriguez.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: Kelly's gimmick was initially based on her past and appearance on "My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding", leading her to use the nicknames "Gypsy Princess" and "Gypsy Queen". However, her persona has since adopted more of a gothic and sexual tone, and is now more based on a succubus. She uses the nickname "Hell's Favorite Harlot", and is known for using tactics such as biting and licking opponents during matches as a way to psyche them out. She has often been compared physically to WWE wrestler Paige, who also licked her opponents. As well as being a professional wrestler, Kelly is also a valet and most notably valeted Austin Theory.


title: Gigi Dolin

text: On November 21, 2018, Kelly married fellow professional wrestler Samuel Ratsch, who is best known by his ring name Darby Allin. She announced in August 2020 that they were divorcing. During an interview on Vickie Guerrero's podcast four months later, she confirmed that she and Allin were no longer married but remained friends.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: Adam Johnson (born 14 July 1987) is an English inactive professional footballer who played as a winger. A product of the Middlesbrough youth academy, he came to prominence after making his debut aged 17 in a UEFA Cup match. He made 120 appearances for Middlesbrough, also spending time on loan at Leeds United and Watford.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: In February 2010, Johnson moved to Manchester City, where he won the FA Cup in 2011 and the Premier League the following season. He was signed by his hometown club Sunderland for £10 million in 2012. Johnson played at various levels for England, earning 12 caps at senior level.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: In March 2015, Johnson was arrested and charged over sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl, with England's age of consent being 16. Johnson continued to play for Sunderland during his bail. The following February, he pleaded guilty to two charges against him, the other being one of child grooming, and was subsequently sacked by Sunderland. In March 2016, Johnson was found guilty of sexual activity with a child and sentenced to six years in prison. He was released in 2019 after serving half his sentence.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: Johnson was born in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, and brought up in Easington, County Durham, in North East England. He played for Cleveland Juniors Football Club and attended Easington Community Science College. Upon seeing Johnson score two goals at a Wembley Stadium seven-a-side school match, Johnny Haynes told Johnson he was "a great little player" with "a lovely left foot".


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: At the age of 12, Johnson was taken in by Middlesbrough's youth academy, having previously attended Newcastle United's Centre of Excellence between 1995 and 1997. He and his Boro teammates David Wheater, Tony McMahon and Andrew Taylor were part of the squad that won the 2003–04 FA Youth Cup.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: He made his senior début aged 17 on 17 March 2005 in the UEFA Cup in the 1–0 defeat away to Sporting CP which saw the club eliminated 4–2 on aggregate in the last 16, replacing Doriva for the last 11 minutes. Almost six months later, on 10 September, he made his Premier League debut, and first senior start, deputising for the injured fellow academy product Stewart Downing in a 2–1 home win against Arsenal. For much of the first half of the 2005–06 season, he was on the bench as an unused substitute, mainly in the UEFA Cup matches. He made his second start in the competition against Litex Lovech on 15 December and set up Massimo Maccarone's first goal in a 2–0 win. For the rest of the season, he remained in the team's matchday squads, albeit as Downing's deputy or an unused substitute.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: Johnson's first goal for Middlesbrough came in a midweek Premier League match away to Bolton Wanderers on 3 May 2006, opening the scoring in a 1–1 draw with "a mazy run from the left flank before curling in a deflected shot". He was playing due to Middlesbrough's involvement in the 2006 UEFA Cup Final, which was to be played a week later as Steve McClaren rested most of the first team squad. On 30 June 2006, he signed a new four-year contract extension.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: On 16 October 2006, he joined Leeds United on a month-long loan after being signed by Leeds' caretaker manager John Carver, but with Leeds struggling in the Championship, it was hard for Johnson to impress despite getting the man of the match award on his debut. After playing four matches during his month-long loan spell, Johnson returned to Middlesbrough as Leeds chose not to extend his loan. Later on in the season, he came on as a substitute in the FA Cup replay with Bristol City and played a vital role in seeing Middlesbrough through to the next round by setting up one goal and scoring the winning penalty in the shootout.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: In September 2007, Johnson joined Championship club Watford on a three-month loan. He played 12 matches for the club, scoring five times, before being recalled to Middlesbrough earlier than stipulated in the deal following some brilliant performances. Coincidentally, Watford's form dipped after his departure.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: In the final match of the season, he scored an 18-yard strike from a loose ball just minutes after coming on as a substitute in Boro's 8–1 victory over Manchester City. In the 2008–09 season, he managed to make 32 appearances, half of those as substitutes as Downing was first choice. He managed to start most of the fixtures near the end of the season when Downing was ruled out with a long-term injury.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: Johnson became an important part of Boro's Championship team for the 2009–10 season following Downing's transfer to Aston Villa, scoring three of Boro's five goals in the first three matches. He led the Boro scoring charts, with eight goals, for the entire first half of the season despite being a winger, which led to new manager Gordon Strachan expressing his concern about overrelying on Johnson for goals. In the 18 August match at Scunthorpe United, he missed a penalty awarded for a foul on Rhys Williams and scored another after being tripped by the Scunthorpe goalkeeper in the penalty box when both went for the rebound.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: After a bright start to the season, the highly rated youngster became a subject of transfer rumours, but the Boro management insisted that he would not be sold. He chose not to extend his contract, however, which was to end after the 2009–10 season. On 13 December, he was substituted for Marvin Emnes after picking up a hamstring injury in the 1–0 home loss to Cardiff City but returned to score a penalty against Scunthorpe in a 3–0 win, thus taking his goal tally into double figures. He scored a brace for the third time in the season when he turned in a man of the match performance against Doncaster Rovers on 26 January to end Boro's winless away streak stretching back to October.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: In recognition of his consistent performances, Johnson was voted for the North East Football Writers' Young Player of the Year award, joining a string of Boro players to do so.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: When the winter transfer window opened, Johnson was again the subject of transfer speculation and Middlesbrough reportedly received a bid from Manchester City. Interest from Manchester City was heightened after Adam Johnson played City weeks earlier in an FA Cup third round. Although Johnson had to go off injured in the first half, he was arguably the best player on the pitch during his 30-minute spell. On 1 February 2010, City signed him for an undisclosed fee, rumoured to be in the region of £7 million, on a four-and-a-half-year contract.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: Johnson made his first appearance for the club on 6 February, coming on as substitute for Stephen Ireland against Hull City. Three days later, he made his first start against Bolton Wanderers on the right side of a three-man attack alongside Carlos Tevez and Emmanuel Adebayor, finishing as the man of the match. Johnson scored his first goal against Sunderland; he curled a left footed effort into the top corner one and a half minutes into injury time to secure a last-gasp 1–1 draw. His performance, which earned the man of the match award, led England manager Fabio Capello to publicly praise him and consider him for selection.


title: Adam Johnson (footballer)

text: On New Year's Day, he scored the winner in the 1–0 win against Blackpool, dedicating his goal to Dale Roberts, his friend and Rushden & Diamonds goalkeeper who committed suicide on 14 December 2010. He ended the season with his first senior trophy of his career, the 2011 FA Cup, coming on as a substitute in the final.