Blantyre

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A large city in southern Malawi, the country's most populous urban centre and a major commercial hub in Africa
2. The largest city in Malawi, located in the south of the country and serving as an important commercial centre
3. A city in southern Malawi that is the nation's biggest urban area and a leading centre of trade and industry

Etymology: Blantyre takes its name from a Scottish village, not from anything African. The name comes from Scottish Gaelic "Blantaidhr", which in turn descends from Cumbric words meaning "summit" or "end" and "land". The same elements survive in Welsh "blaen" and "tir", so the name is in origin a Celtic description of a place on high ground or at the edge of land. The name was carried to Africa by Scottish missionaries. The Church of Scotland's mission on the Shire Highlands named its station after the Lanarkshire village of Blantyre, where the missionary David Livingstone had been born. That Scottish village, in turn, kept the old Gaelic-derived name that had been applied to the landscape centuries earlier. Malawi's largest city therefore carries a Gaelic place name first given to a Scottish village, transplanted into central Africa by missionaries who had Livingstone's home town in mind.