Date
Type Country
Usage Chewa, English, Swahili, French, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Estonian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Turkmen, Arabic
Scripts مالاوي(Arabic)
Pronounced Pron. mə-LAH-wee(English) MA-LA-WEE(French) ma-LOW-ee(Portuguese) mə-LA-wee(Catalan) ma-LA-vee(German, Dutch, Polish) MAH-lah-wee(Finnish) MA-la-vi(Czech)
Meaning & History
Possibly from Chewa malawi meaning "flame, fire". This is the name of a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It was renamed from Nyasaland when the country gained independence from Britain in 1964. Hastings Banda, the country's first president and the man who chose the name, claimed to have seen it on an old map in the form Maravi, referring to a lake.