Congo River mentioned in 1535. Abraham Ortelius in his world map of 1564 labeled as "Manicongo" the city at the mouth of the river. The tribal names in "Kongo" possibly derive from a word for a public gathering or tribal assembly. The modern name of the Kongo people or "Bakongo" was introduced in the early 20th century. The name "Zaire" is from a Portuguese adaptation of a Kikongo word, ("river"), a truncation of ("river swallowing rivers"). The river was known as "Zaire" during the 16th and 17th centuries; "Congo" seems to have replaced "Zaire" gradually in English usage during the 18th century,
Zairean zaire zaïres" instead of "cinq millions "de" zaïres". The New Zaire (French: "Nouveau Zaïre"), symbol "NZ", ISO 4217 code ZRN, replaced the first zaire in 1993 at an exchange rate of 1 new zaire = 3,000,000 old zaires. It was subdivided into 100 new makuta (symbol: "NK"). This currency was only issued in banknote form and suffered from similarly high inflation to its predecessor. The new zaire was replaced by the Congolese franc again on 1 July 1998, at an exchange rate of 1 franc = 100,000 new zaires shortly after the Republic of Zaire became the Democratic Republic of the