Portuguese contact and the naming of the Rio dos Camarões

1472

The Portuguese navigator Fernão do Pó, exploring the coast on behalf of the Lisbon merchant Fernão Gomes, reached the Wouri river estuary in 1472. Finding an abundance of prawns there, the Portuguese named the waterway "Rio dos Camarões" (river of prawns), a name that would later give the whole country its own.