Name
Zimbabwe is the Shona name of the ruins, first recorded in 1531 by Vicente Pegado, Captain of the Portuguese Garrison of Sofala. Pegado noted that "The natives of the country call these edifices Symbaoe, which according to their language signifies 'court'".
The name clearly contains dzimba, the Shona term for "houses". Apart from this, there are two theories for the etymology of the name. The first proposes that the word is derived from Dzimba-dza-mabwe, translated from the Karanga dialect of Shona as "large houses of stone" (dzimba = plural of imba, "house"; mabwe = plural of bwe, "stone"). A second suggests that Zimbabwe is a contracted form of dzimba-hwe which means "venerated houses" in the Zezuru dialect of Shona, as usually applied to the houses or graves of chiefs.
Read more about this topic: Great Zimbabwe
Famous quotes containing the word name:
“What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore than name. Are they all alike. I think so.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)