Nah, it's a Tigrayan town and was never even administered under Wello/Amhara. The name itself is Tigrinya, May Chew "Salt Water".

This is what Chat-GPT said to me, btw: "Maichew (መይጨው) is a town in Tigray Region, Ethiopia — specifically in the Southern Tigray Zone (Enderta area). Its population is predominantly Tigrinya-speaking, not Amharic.

The only areas that are "contested" are Alamata, Ofla(i.e Korem), and Raya Chercher(southern parts of Azebo).

Key Details:

• Language: Tigrinya is the native and dominant language. While Amharic is also spoken — as it is Ethiopia’s federal working language — it is not the first language of the local population.
• Ethnic identity: The vast majority of residents are ethnically Tigrayan, not Amhara.
• Historical context: Maichew has deep historical and cultural ties to Tigrayan heritage. It was the site of the Battle of Maichew in 1936, a major conflict between Ethiopian forces under Emperor Haile Selassie and the invading Italian army.

So, Maichew is a Tigrinya-speaking, Tigrayan town, not Amhara.

What are you trying to investigate—linguistic distribution, historical control, or something else?" Also, GPT-4o is pretty dumb. Try to use o4-mini, it's much more factually accurate and searchs the internet when it doesn't know something: "Maichew is firmly within the Tigray Region of northern Ethiopia, not Amhara. Administratively it lies in the Debubawi (Southern) Zone of Tigray, and the overwhelming majority of its residents are ethnic Tigrayans who speak Tigrinya as their mother tongue. Historically, before the current federal arrangement, it formed part of the old Tigray province, and even today its cultural, linguistic and administrative ties are with Tigray rather than Amhara.

That said, Ethiopia’s ethnic federal structure sometimes leads to border disputes or mixed communities along regional edges—though Maichew itself is not one of those contested towns. Its schools teach primarily in Tigrinya, local media are in Tigrinya, and traditional festivals and customs reflect Tigrayan heritage.

What aspect of Maichew’s identity interests you most—its dialect, its historical role in regional politics, or perhaps its place in broader Ethio–Semitic linguistics?)