Ubangi-Shari

When those partners rejected the coalition, too, Boganda decided to keep the French-inspired name for what had become a freestanding, independent Ubangi-Shari.

And it’s not as though he was casting aside centuries of tradition: While Ubangi and Shari are indigenous words, the area was not known as Ubangi-Shari before the French arrived.

The Central African Republic was once a French colony known as Ubangi-Shari, because the land is split between the basins of the Ubangi and Shari rivers.

He wanted to combine Ubangi-Shari with nine other countries in the region that spoke Romance languages, to form something called “the United States of Latin Africa.”

Boganda didn’t explain why he abandoned the name Ubangi-Shari, but he may have hoped that his neighbors would eventually see the benefits of unity and join the Central African Republic.