The name derives from the Mandinka phrase "kana-ntoro," meaning "do not trouble me," referring to the disputes that Tiramakhan Traore's expedition struggled with there. They founded the village of Songkunda, meaning "place of agreement," to commemorate the re-establishment of peace.[1]
The name of the area appears in written records as early as the 1456 voyage of Diego Gomes.[2] At one point Kantora was a province of the Kabu Empire but it had different boundaries then.[3] In particular, Duarte Pacheco Pereira noted in 1506 that Sutuco on the north bank of the river was the main trading center of Kantora.[4] By the 1621 visit of Richard Jobson, however, the north bank was under the control of the King of Wuli.[5]
^Bühnen, Stephan. “Place Names as an Historical Source: An Introduction with Examples from Southern Senegambia and Germany.” History in Africa, vol. 19, 1992, pp. 45–101. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3171995. Accessed 27 Jul. 2022.
^Clark, Andrew F. and Lucie Colvin Phillips. Historical Dictionary of Senegal, (Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1994) p. 172