The Ebola virus was discovered by a team of researchers in 1976 in Yambuku, a small city in Congo. During a meeting to classify the virus, Dr. Pierre Sureau suggested naming it after the village, but Dr. Joel Brennan was concerned about the potential negative impact on the residents. Eventually, Karl Johnson proposed naming it after the Ebola River, a local tributary of the Congo River, to avoid this issue. The name “Ebola” stuck, with the river deriving its name from a Lingala word meaning “black” in the Niger-Congo language family.