Cameroon

Cameroon is a country in West Africa named prawn. This sounds absurd but it is nevertheless true. Cameroon is a corruption of the Portuguese word camaraõ, which means prawn. In the early 15th century, Portuguese seafarers first named this West African region Rio des Camarões literally translated as river of prawns because of the copious amounts of prawns found in river estuaries. English seafarers soon followed but could not get their tongues around the original Portuguese name and thus called it Cameroon. Mercifully, the expression don’t come the raw Cameroon with me has not yet reached Australia.