section_path: Etymology
section_name: Etymology
paragraph_text: Etymology
  
  The name Mali is taken from the name of the Mali Empire. It means "the place where the king lives" and carries a connotation of strength.
  
  Fourteenth-century Maghrebi traveller Ibn Battuta reported that the capital of the empire was called Mali. One Mandinka tradition tells that the legendary first emperor Sundiata Keita changed himself into a hippopotamus upon his death in the Sankarani River and that it was possible to find villages in the area of this river called "old Mali". A study of Malian proverbs noted that in old Mali, there is a village called Malikoma, which means "New Mali", and that Mali could have formerly been the name of a city.
  
  Another theory suggests that Mali is a Fulani pronunciation of the name of the Mande peoples. It is suggested that a sound shift led to the change, whereby in Fulani the alveolar segment /nd/ shifts to /l/ and the terminal vowel denasalizes and raises, leading "Manden" to shift to /mali/.