User:Soap/black

Early European explorers of Africa found it convenient to name African settlements after the people living there, but in many cases, when the native tribal name was not known or not associated with the land, they simply named the area "black land" because of the sharp contrast in skin color between native Africans and the visiting Europeans. This continued even after it became clear that the entire continent of Africa was populated by such people, rather than just the one country explorers happened to be visiting at the time. Many of these names have survived to this day. Also, at least two of these names are not of European origin, and two denote places outside of Africa.

When I created this page, I did not know that we already had an article called Land of the blacks.

countries named after words for "black"

 * Niger, from Latin niger "black".
 * NOTE, this entry is disputed, as the name is likely at most a folk etymology, and perhaps not even that. This also eliminates Nigeria. But I want this on the list because it is the most obvious entry and anyone looking for it and not seeing it may think that there was a mistake.


 * Nigeria
 * Sudan, from Medieval Arabic sūdān "black people", from the root s-w-d "to blacken".
 * Guinea, from Berber aginaw "black(-skinned)".
 * Guinea-Bissau
 * Equatorial Guinea
 * Papua New Guinea
 * (Melanesia), from the Greek for "black islands".
 * Zanzibar, from Persian zangi bār "black-skinned coast".
 * Tanzania
 * Ethiopia, a very old word, from ancient Greek, possibly meaning "burnt face land".
 * Kemet (Egypt), from Egyptian.
 * Ghana, possibly a variant form of the name Guinea.

There are definitely no examples of countries being named "white land" or "yellow land" or "red land" after the people living there. At least not in reference to skin color.