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My follow-up guess is that Emerentius was taken to South Africa by our Dutch settlers, also as a feminine name but with spelling variants. The best known of these is Emmarentia, probably originating because Emma is a familiar female name. I know a woman, now in her 70s, whose given name is Rentia (pronounced RENsha), a shortened form of Emmarentia.

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I have not seen any examples of Emerens or Emerentius in local sources, but nor have I looked: census and BMD notices are not made public here, as a matter of policy, though this might be changing. Public records are kept in very few places and are hard to access and, one suspects, incomplete.