Benin

The Kingdom of Benin arose around the eleventh century in what is now southern Nigeria, governed by the Edo people from a capital they called Ubini. Portuguese sailors under João Afonso de Aveiro reached the court in 1486 and rendered the name as Benim, a phonetic approximation of the Edo original. The kingdom they encountered was no backwater: Benin City held broad avenues, a vast palace compound, and bronze casting that stunned European visitors who compared the craftsmanship to Dürer.

The Bight of Benin took its name from the kingdom's coastal reach, and for centuries the label Benin belonged to this Edo civilization in Nigeria. The Dahomey kingdom to the west, centered on Abomey and ruled by a different dynasty, had no connection to the name. When France colonized Dahomey in 1894, the territory kept its own name through independence in 1960.

In 1975, President Mathieu Kérékou renamed the country Benin while pursuing a Marxist-Leninist political program. The choice was geographic rather than ethnic: the Bight of Benin borders the country's southern coast, even though the famous Kingdom of Benin lies entirely in Nigeria. The old Edo dynasty still survives, its Oba reigning in Benin City with unbroken ceremonial authority.

The bronze plaques looted from Benin City by a British punitive expedition in 1897 ended up in the British Museum, the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, and dozens of other institutions. Repatriation negotiations continued for more than a century. In 2021, Germany agreed to return its pieces, and the Benin Bronzes began traveling home to the Nigerian city that gave a West African country its name by accident of geography.