The Origin of Names, Words and Everything in Between
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Patrick Foote. The Origin of Names, Words and Everything in Between
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Praise for The Origin of Names
“What I really like about The Origin of Names is that it makes me think about things I never knew I wanted the answer for.”
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The country is named after Mount Kenya, the second tallest mountain in Kenya and one of its most iconic landmarks. So how did Mount Kenya get its name? There are multiple suggestions as to how this name came to be. One of the more popular stories is when Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann (two missionaries exploring the land in 1846) asked their native guide what they called the huge mountain they saw in the distance. The guide told them the mountain was called “kiima kya kenia” in his language of Kamba. “Kenia” translates to glitter or shine in relation to the shining ice that capped the mountain.
Nonetheless, Kamba wasn’t the only language in the region. The Ameru people called the mountain kirimira which means “mountain of white feather,” once again referencing the ice on the mountains. The Kikuyu people called the mountain Kirinyaga or Kiri Nyaga which can be either translated to “God’s Resting Place” or “the Place with the ostriches.” Some even feel the mountain looks similar to the male ostrich with the black of the mountain and the white of the snow sharing the same colors as the huge flightless birds, but, like I said, it’s a tad of a stretch. It was one of these dialect names for the mountain that led to the mispronunciation in English as Kenya.
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