Date
Type Country & Region
Usage Berber, English, Norwegian, Finnish, Turkish, Hausa, Swahili, Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog, Ancient Roman
Scripts ⵍⵉⴱⵢⴰ(Tifinagh)
Note In Turkish this name is written with a dotted İ. It appears as LİBYA in uppercase and libya in lowercase.
Meaning & History
From Λιβύη (Libye), the Ancient Greek name for North Africa. It was derived from the Berber tribe of the Libu, attested as rbw in Ancient Egyptian. This name was revived in 1934 when the Italian colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were merged, carrying forward when the country gained independence in 1951. It is called ليبيا (Libiya) in Arabic.