Editing Congo River (section)

==Name==
The name ''Congo/Kongo'' originates from the [[Kingdom of Kongo]] once located on the southern bank of the river. The kingdom in turn was named after the indigenous Bantu [[Kongo people]], known in the 17th century as "Esikongo".<ref>{{cite book |title=Africa's Urban Past |first=David |last=Anderson |date=2000 |isbn=9780852557617 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0IwMwBVfr0sC&pg=PA79 |page=79 |publisher=James Currey Publishers |access-date=2017-05-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171222054121/https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0IwMwBVfr0sC&pg=PA79 |archive-date=2017-12-22 |url-status=live}}</ref> South of the Kingdom of Kongo proper lay the similarly named [[Kakongo]] kingdom, mentioned in 1535. [[Abraham Ortelius]] labelled "Manicongo" as the city at the mouth of the river in his world map of 1564.{{efn|[[Manikongo]] was properly the title of the kings of Kongo; their capital was at the site of modern [[M'banza-Kongo]], capital of Angola's northwestern [[Zaire Province]]. Ortelius had no knowledge of the [[orography]] of Africa and drew fictitious courses for its rivers; his Congo upstream of its [[estuary]] turns sharply south, flowing through what would correspond to [[Angola]] and [[Botswana]].}} The tribal names in ''Kongo'' possibly derive from a word for a public gathering or tribal assembly. The modern name of the Kongo people or ''Bakongo'' was introduced in the early 20th century.{{citation needed|date=May 2017}}

The name ''Zaire'' is from a Portuguese adaptation of a [[Kongo language|Kikongo]] word, {{lang|kg|nzere}} ("river"), a truncation of {{lang|kg|nzadi o nzere}} ("river swallowing rivers").{{sfn|Forbath|1979|p=19}} The river was known as ''Zaire'' during the 16th and 17th centuries; ''Congo'' seems to have replaced ''Zaire'' gradually in English usage during the 18th century, and ''Congo'' is the preferred English name in 19th-century literature, although references to ''Zahir'' or ''Zaire'' as the name used by the inhabitants remained common.<ref>{{cite book |author=James Barbot |title=An Abstract of a Voyage to Congo River, Or the Zair and to Cabinde in the Year 1700 |date=1746}}<br/>{{*}}{{cite book |author=James Hingston Tuckey |date=1818 |title=Narrative of an Expedition to Explore the River Zaire, Usually Called the Congo, in South Africa, in 1816 |url=https://archive.org/details/narrativeofexped00tuck |access-date=2019-11-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180521164926/https://archive.org/details/narrativeofexped00tuck |archive-date=2018-05-21 |url-status=live}}<br/>{{*}}{{cite book |quote=Congo River, called ''Zahir'' or ''Zaire'' by the natives |author=John Purdy |title=Memoir, Descriptive and Explanatory, to Accompany the New Chart of the Ethiopic Or Southern Atlantic Ocean |date=1822 |page=112}}</ref> The [[Democratic Republic of the Congo]] and the [[Republic of the Congo]] are named after it, as was the previous [[Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville)|Republic of the Congo]] which had gained independence in 1960 from the [[Belgian Congo]]. The [[Zaire|Republic of Zaire]] during 1971–1997 was also named after the river's name in [[French language|French]] and [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]].