Short answers, pulled from the story.
In isiZulu, Durban is called eThekwini, from the word itheku, meaning "bay" or "lagoon." The English name Durban was adopted in 1835, when a meeting of 35 European residents named the settlement after Sir Benjamin D'Urban, then governor of the Cape Colony.
Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama named the coastline Natal during Christmastide in 1497 while sailing parallel to the KwaZulu-Natal coast in search of a sea route from Europe to India. Natal is the Portuguese word for Christmas.
Henry Francis Fynn helped King Shaka recover from a stab wound sustained during an assassination attempt by one of his half-brothers. In gratitude, Shaka issued a document dated the 7th of August 1824 granting F. G. Farewell and Company full possession of land that included the port of Natal, extending 10 miles south, 25 miles north, and 100 miles inland from the Bay.
In May 1842, when Voortrekker forces besieged a British garrison at the Bay of Natal after the failed attack at Congella, a local English trader named Dick King escaped the siege with his servant Ndongeni and rode to Grahamstown in 14 days to summon reinforcements. The relief force arrived 20 days later, ending the siege and securing British control of the area.
The eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, which encompasses Durban and more than 120 surrounding towns and suburbs, had a population of 4.2 million in 2022. Within the city's administrative limits alone, the population stood at 595,061 in 2011.
A 2019 study published in PLOS One projected that by 2050, under a moderate climate scenario, Durban's climate would most closely resemble the current climate of Kigali, with an annual temperature increase of 1.7 degrees. The 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report listed Durban among 12 major African cities facing severe sea level rise exposure, with those cities projected to sustain cumulative damages of US$65 billion under the moderate scenario and US$86.5 billion under the high-emission scenario by 2050.