Gnawa

Meaning

Noun

• Any member of an ethnic group and Sufi religious order in Morocco.

Origin

• From Arabic غَنَاوَة. The name appears to originate from the Saharan Berber dialect word aguinaw (or agenaou) (Arabic أݣناو), meaning black (men), perhaps itself derived from the name of a city significant in the 11th century, in what is now western Mali, called Gana, in Arabic Ghana or Jenna and in Portuguese and later French Guinea or Jenné.