Meaning

noun an African river; flows into the South Atlantic

noun a landlocked republic in West Africa; gained independence from France in 1960; most of the country is dominated by the Sahara Desert

originCommonly linked by folk etymology to Latin niger (“black”), which likely influenced the modern spelling. Some sources give the term to Tuareg roots, deriving it from a claimed gher n-gheren or egereou n-igereouen (“river of rivers”). Compare Tarifit iɣzar-n-iɣezran. Older sources derive Niger, via a series of mistranslations and geographic misplacements by Greek, Roman and Arab geographers, from…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0