 Less likely, it is a High German loan word, which was borrowed from Italian in the 17th century, from the sizable minority of German settlers in the initial European colonization of South Africa.The officer commanding an Afrikaans "kommando" is called a "kommandant", which is a regimental commander equivalent to a lieutenant-colonel or a colonel.The Oxford English Dictionary ties the English use of the word meaning "[a] member of a body of picked men ..." directly into its Afrikaans' origins