Kenya

The name Kenya comes from Kiinyaa, the word the Kamba people used for the massive snow-capped peak that dominates the central highlands. The Kamba, a Bantu-speaking people who farm and herd on the mountain's southeastern slopes, named the peak for the ostrich: the contrast of black volcanic rock and white glacier resembled the plumage of the male Struthio camelus. Kiinyaa in Kamba means something close to the ostrich-patterned one.

Johann Ludwig Krapf, a German missionary serving the Church Missionary Society, was the first European to see Mount Kenya, on December 3, 1849. He was camped at the Rabai mission station near Mombasa, ill with malaria, when Kamba guides pointed northeast to the gleaming summit. Krapf wrote the name in his journal as Kenia, and his 1860 book Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours introduced Mount Kenia to European geography.

The British East Africa Protectorate, formalized in 1895, used the mountain's name for the entire territory, standardizing the spelling to Kenya by the early 1900s. The Kikuyu people, who live on the mountain's western and southern slopes, had their own name for it: Kirinyaga, meaning place of brightness or God's resting place. Both names coexisted for decades; it was the Kamba form, routed through Krapf's journals and British colonial documents, that became official.

Kenya Colony was declared in 1920, formally replacing the Protectorate. Independence came on December 12, 1963, and Jomo Kenyatta became the country's first president, his adopted surname derived from kinyata, the Kikuyu word for a traditional beaded belt he wore. The mountain's plumage-name and a warrior's belt-name became the two words most associated with the nation's founding.