WHERE DID THE NAME ‘OUAGADOUGOU’ COME FROM? Ouagadougou
[wah-gah-doo-goo]
After Timbuktu perhaps the most resonant of all African place names, Burkina Faso’s capital derives from a phrase (here in its French spelling) meaning ‘where people find honour and respect’. The name of the country itself is altogether more recent — a political construct devised in 1984 by combining the Mooré word for ‘free man’ with the Dyula term for ‘land’.