Rand - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

RAND, a Dutch word meaning border, edge, used in South Africa to designate a low rounded range of hills; specifically it is an abbreviated form of Witwatersrand, an elevated ridge in the southern Transvaal, forming the water-parting between the basins of the Orange and Limpopo. The Rand is famous for its gold-bearing reefs (see Gold), and the word is often used as a synonym for the mining industry carried on over a great part of its area, or for Johannesburg, the city which that industry created.