What is the real meaning of Mount Kilimanjaro?

Nobody truly knows how the name came about, Hans-Meyer the first European to summit the peak heard the name from the local Chagga people. But from my understanding the etymology of “Kilimanjaro” is from the Swahili words “Kilima” (Mountain) and “N... read more

The origin of the name"Kilimanjaro" is not precisely known, but a number of theories exist. European explorers had adopted the name by 1860 and reported that"Kilimanjaro" was the mountain's Kiswahili name. But according to the 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia, the name of the mountain was"Kilima-Njaro". read more

True, the name Kilimanjaro bears no resemblance to any word in the Chagga vocabulary; but if we divide it into two parts then a few possibilities present themselves. One is that Kilima is derived from the Chagga term kilelema, meaning ‘difficult or impossible’, while jaro could come from the Chagga terms njaare (‘bird’) or jyaro (‘caravan’). read more