Nyasa, also spelled Nyassa or Niassa, is a common word for "lake" in the languages around what is now known as Lake Malawi. In the colonial period that lake was called Lake Nyasa and Malawi was named Nyasaland. Nyasa also means rubbish or bad in the chichewa language. Possibly the colonialists thought that of the land as evidenced in lack of infrastructure emphasis in Nyasaland during the time it was a colony.
