Where does the name Wambundu come from?

[Solarbaby]

As in the Wambundu class. I googled it and all I got was sites about the Wambundu class. But is it a real word? From what I've found on google the only reference to the word is the ship itself.

But all classes have been named after important things. I hate being ignorant of these things. It does sound like a made up word. But I doubt they would have done that.

Help please

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I got one Google result that refers to a tribe in the Congo...

http://books.google.com/books?id=xG...ed=0CBgQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=wambundu&f=false

Even before I saw that, I'd narrowed down the origin of the word to either African or Australian Aboriginal--so I'd say this is correct.

Another site comes to the "African tribe" conclusion as well.

http://www.trekmania.net/the_fleet/utopia/class_name_origins.htm

This page provides more detail, including an unlikely theory with an origin in Papua New Guinea--but again settles on the African tribe theory (and gives more information on where the tribe lives).

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/ship_names.htm

 

[Solarbaby]

Wow thanks for those links. Great stuff. SO after reading them all, no one knows for sure lol. But mostly like an African tribe name.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

No problem! And yeah, that's what it looks like. Who knows...maybe the engineer who designed that class belonged to that tribe. That would make sense to me, anyway...

 

[Cicero]

The Wambundu were a tribe native to the area near Boyoma Falls, in Tshopo Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. They lived on the south bank of the Congo River between the Inkisse River and Mangele Hills, in an area that was sometimes known by the name of the tribe. The name is obscure largely because of changes in transliteration schemes.

The system used by 19th Century British writers rendered the name as either Wambundu or (more commonly) Wabundu. The latter is close to the modern spelling, Ubundu. Under Belgian rule, the place name was changed to Pontherville (spelling of this also varies) in the 1890s, and the falls were known as Stanley Falls, but both local names were eventually restored. I find no reference to the people themselves after 1910, but the area was apparently the site of bloody fighting in the Congo Wars of the 1990s and 2000s.