the same thing I did for Americas two posts before, now it's the turn of Africa, the other strongly colonized continent in which Europeans made a bit what they wanted.
so, considering only the name of the countries, here you have the toponymic map of Africa in which it was interesting to distinguish names coming from local languages, name derived from european languages and names coming from arabic, that was the other strong influence in the continent besides the europeans.
here you have the result:
so, considering only the name of the countries, here you have the toponymic map of Africa in which it was interesting to distinguish names coming from local languages, name derived from european languages and names coming from arabic, that was the other strong influence in the continent besides the europeans.
here you have the result:
Probably Gabon isn't coloured properly. Its name derives from portuguese, according to its wikipedia entries in english, italian and french. Anyway I prefer to believe in your research.
ReplyDeleteThank you Pedro. I also thought an Arabic origin for Gabon name was a bit uncommon, but anyway, I found in wikipedia this etymological explanation:
ReplyDelete"Cloak", Anglicized from the Portuguese Gabão, bestowed on the Komo River estuary for its supposed resemblance to a gabão, a kind of pointy-hooded overcoat whose name derives from the Arabic qabā’ (قباء).
but I think there can be several thories and I think it's not normal that Gabon comes from Arabic.
so, I agree with you