A local politician named after Adolf Hitler has won an election in Namibia but insists he’s not seeking world domination.

Adolf Hitler Uunona, 54, claimed 84 percent of votes cast last month in a regional council election in the northern part of the country.

His political opponent, Mumbala Abner, received just 213 of the votes, compared to his sweeping 1196.

But he told German tabloid Bild that he was not “striving for world domination”. 

Mr Uunona, who revealed his wife calls him Adolf, admitted his father had named him after the Nazi leader but said he “probably didn’t understand what Adolf Hitler stood for.”

He told the newspaper that growing up, he initially saw his name as normal. “Only as a teenager did I understand that this man wanted to conquer the whole world.”

He said he had “nothing to do” with Nazi ideology but that it was “too late” to change his name. 

Namibia, which was a German colony until 1915, still bears the scars of its past.

The country recently rejected an offer of compensation for the massacre of tens of thousands of indigenous people in the early 1900s in what was then known as German South West Africa.

Germany and Namibia have held talks on the issue since 2015.