How many African countries got their names

qz.com/africa/1722919/how-many-african-countries-got-their-names

Ciku Kimeria October 6, 2019

Lifestyle

TOPONYMIC

The most unusual ways many African countries got their names

Africa in 1885

Image: By Bartholomew - https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/africa_1885.jpg,

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78086994

The concept of nation states in Africa is only a bit over a century old, arising after the
1884 Berlin Conference and the subsequent Scramble for Africa by European
superpowers of the time. It is therefore not surprising that the names of most African
countries are remnants of a colonial legacy.

Nearly every country on earth is named after after one of four things—a directional
description of the country, a feature of the land, a tribe name or an important person,
most likely a man. For the most part, Africa mirrors this trend with a few exceptions. The
stories of how African countries got their names ranges from the more mundane, to the
fantastical and sometimes even the mind-boggling.

Cameroon, a country that has the complicated legacy of first having been colonized by
the Germans, then later partitioned by the French and British, was actually named by a
Portuguese explorer in the 15th century. Coming across the Wouri river, one of

1/7
Cameroon’s largest rivers, he renamed it, Rio dos Camarões (shrimp river,) for the
abundance of shrimp in it. The name stuck and evolved to become the country name.

Africa map from 1885 by Bartholomew

Image: By Bartholomew - https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/africa_1885.jpg,
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78086994

2/7
Another 15th century Portuguese explorer would find his way further West where either
the mountains that looked like a lion’s teeth or the impressive roar of thunderstorms would
lead him to name the place, Sierra Lyoa (lion mountains.) In time, the name would
change to Sierra Leone.

Centuries later, another mountain would yield a country’s name in East Africa, when the
British came upon an imposing snow-capped mountain that the Kikuyu people called
Kirinyaga (Where God dwells.) As they struggled to pronounce, Kirinyaga, they called it
Mt. Kenya – the country would be named after this mountain.

The video player is currently playing an ad.

Aerial view of Mount Kenya

Image: REUTERS/ Antony Njuguna

Elsewhere it was not linguistic challenges that led to a country’s misnaming, but actually a
sort of clerical error. Marco Polo, the 13th century Italian explorer never visited
Madagascar, but is believed to be responsible for mistaking it for Mogadishu and
including it in his memoirs. This is the first written reference to Madageiscar. Thus, the
corrupted Italian transliteration of Mogadishu, Madageiscar, eventually gave the world’s
second largest island country its name.

Mali derives its name from the original Bambara word for hippopotamus that evolved to
mean “the place where the king lives.” In Malian culture, the hippopotamus signifies
strength. There is a particularly fascinating Malian legend about how the founder of the

3/7
Malian empire, Sundiata Keita, changed himself into a hippopotamus upon his death and
continued dwelling in the Sankarani River, a tributary of the Niger River.

Close to Mali, two other countries got their name from Western Africa’s principal river, the
Niger river. Niger (former French colony to the north of Nigeria) and Nigeria (a former
British colony) were both named for the Niger river that flows through them. It was
originally called Ni Gir (River Gir) in one of the local languages though there’s also the
theory it was named for the Latin adjective for black, as in Black River.

A man casts his fishing net into River Niger in southern Nigeria
Image: REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye

The Arab legacy on the continent was also the source of some of the names of African
countries. In Mozambique, it would be an Arab Sheikh, whose name would remain with
the country. Mussa Bin Bique ruled the area at the time when the Portuguese arrived, and
the Portuguese would call this country, Mozambique. Sudan would get its name from the
Arabic phrase, Bilad as-Sudan (land of the blacks).

Comoros derives its name from 10th century Arab traders who called it kamar or kumr,
meaning moon, perhaps because of the half-moon shape that the four original islands of
Comoros form.

Gabon, would also be named based on a shape of a place. The country’s first European
visitors were Portuguese traders who arrived in the 15th century and named it Gaboa
(coat,) based on the shape of the Como River Estuary, where they first explored, that
looked to them like a coat with sleeves and a hood.

4/7
In the South, Zimbabwe would reclaim its name in 1979 just ahead of independence from
the 13th-15th century kingdom of Zimbabwe removing its colonial legacy name of
Rhodesia, after Cecil Rhodes. The British colonialist, whose legacy on the continent and
beyond is called to question these days, headed the British South Africa company that
during colonial times, “owned” present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Ghana on its part would also reclaim its name at independence from the Ancient West
African Kingdom of Ghana after its British colonial legacy when it was known as the Gold
Coast. Recently, in multicultural and multiracial South Africa, there have also been some
calls to shake off the colonial legacy of its naming by changing its name to Azania.
Interestingly, even this name has no African origin. It was the name used by 1st century
Greek explorers to refer to Southern Africa.

Even a country without colonial heritage find its names have roots in Europe, such is the
case with Ethiopia, which was never colonized but whose name also has Greek roots
from the words “burnt-face” as a noun or “red-brown” in as an adjective. Liberia, the
continent’s oldest republic which was established as independent country in 1847 by
freed former African-American slaves was obviously named for liberty.

Sign up to the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief here for news and analysis on African
business, tech and innovation in your inbox

📬 Sign up for the Daily Brief

Our free, fast, and fun briefing on the global economy, delivered every weekday morning.

EVs

Tesla has so many unsold cars that it's storing them in an an

abandoned mall parking lot

Elon Musk's EV maker is renting parking lots to store thousands

of vehicles

5/7
Photo: Sean Gallup (Getty Images)

Parking lots full of Tesla vehicles are becoming impossible to ignore as the electric
automaker seemingly can’t sell enough cars and trucks to match its rate of production.
According to its own figures, the electric automaker produced 46,561 more vehicles than
it delivered to customers during the first quarter of 2024. Where are all these cars going?
Parking lots at its factories, malls and airports.

The Chesterfield Mall, about 20 miles west of St. Louis, has become an overflow lot for
Tesla. Emblematic of American retail’s current state, the mall is slated to be demolished
and replaced with a $2 billion mixed-use project. The Staenberg Group, the mall’s owner,
is eking out the last drops of revenue before the mall’s remaining tenants have to move
out on August 31. Tim Lowe, a Staenberg Group senior vice president, told KTVI:

“We put a plan together to try and create alternate uses that would kind be able to
use some of the remaining life left in the mall before we tear it down. One of those
uses was allowing people to use the parking lot for different things.”

“One of our users happens to be Tesla, who does have a dealership in the
[Chesterfield] Valley, but does not have enough capacity at the dealership to park all
of the cars they are bringing in. So they are renting space within the parking lot to
store their cars.”

Lowe estimates that there are at least 300 Tesla vehicles parked at the Chesterfield Mall.
However, Tesla isn’t slowing down production, Recent drone footage from the
automaker’s Fremont, California factory shows that cars are still rolling off the assembly
lines at a high rate to fill the site’s lots. Things aren’t different on the other side of the

6/7
Atlantic. Neuhardenberg, a small town in Germany of less than 3,000 residents, is
complaining about the noise Tesla transporters are making as the company parks cars at
the nearby regional airport.

Along with having to store 10% of the vehicles it builds, Tesla also laid off 10% of its
workforce. The Cybertruck is also proving to be a nightmare for many of the owners who
decided to take the plunge on the divisive electric pickup, including a warrant that covers
coolant leaks for the first 35 miles.

7/7