Q: Did Latin's "niger" (black) originate from an African word for the Niger River?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 10/22/2011 10:30 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>Possible etymology of "Niger" [river] is discussed on the Wikipedia page.

Thanks, Doug.  I hadn't thought that Wikipedia might go into the
etymology.  And it also makes clear what even I would have thought --
the river had different names in different languages.  (One semantic,
"big/great river/water"; several pronunciations.)

I find the speculation about the name as known around Timbuktu plausible.

Joel

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