Madagascar gets its current name from Marco Polo, the fourteenth-century Italian explorer, who described an African island of untold wealth called Madeigascar in his memoirs. Polo heard about the island second-hand during his travels in Asia. Most scholars believe that he described Mogadishu, the port located in present-day Somalia. Nevertheless, Italian cartographers attached the name "Madagascar" to the island during the Renaissance.
It changed its name to Malagasy fairly recently but later changed it back.