Name of Brazil

The etymology of "Brazil" stems from brazilwood, its earliest commercially exploited product.

In Portuguese brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology "red like an ember", formed from Latin brasa ("ember") and the suffix -il (from -iculum or -ilium).^[1][2][3] In Tupi it is called ibirapitanga (literally "red wood").

The land of what became Brazil was first called Ilha de Vera Cruz ("Island of the True Cross") by the Portuguese captain Pedro Álvares Cabral, upon the Portuguese discovery of the land in 1500, for the Feast of the Cross (May 3 on the liturgical calendar). It was quickly renamed Terra de Santa Cruz ("Land of the Holy Cross"), when it was realized it was not an island. Curiously, Italian merchants in Lisbon, who interviewed the returning crews in 1501, recorded its name as the "Land of Parrots" (Terra di Papaga).^[4]

1519 map of the coast of Brazil, showing the harvesting of brazilwood.

From 1502 to 1512, the Portuguese claim on Brazil was leased by the crown to a Lisbon merchant consortium led by Fernão de Loronha for commercial exploitation. Loronha set up an extensive enterprise along the coast focusing on the harvesting of brazilwood. A dyewood that produces a deep red dye, reminiscent of the color of glowing embers, brazilwood was much in demand by the European cloth industry and previously had to be imported from India at great expense. Loronha is estimated to have harvested some 20,000 quintals of brazilwood on the Brazilian coast by 1506. By the 1510s, French interlopers from the Atlantic clothmaking ports of Normandy and Brittany, began to also routinely visit the Brazilian coast to do their own (illegal) brazilwood harvesting.

It was during Loronha's tenure that the name began to transition to Terra do Brasil ("Land of Brazil") and its inhabitants to Brasileiros. Although some commentators suspect Loronha, as a New Christian (a converted Jew), might have been reluctant to refer to it after the True Cross, the truth is probably more mundane. It was rather common for 15th- and 16th-century Portuguese to refer to distant lands by their commercial product rather than their proper name, e.g. Madeira island and the series of coasts of West Africa (Melegueta Coast, Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Slave Coast), etc. Brazil simply followed that pattern. Brazilwood harvesting was doubtlessly the principal and often sole objective of European visitors to Brazil in the early part of the 16th C.

The connection to the brazilwood harvest is also found in the demonym. In the Portuguese language, an inhabitant of Brazil is referred to as a Brasileiro. But the common rules of the language reserves the suffix -eiro to denote occupations, rather than inhabitants (which are usually given the suffix -ano). The English equivalent is the suffix -er for occupations (e.g. baker, shoemaker) and the suffix "-an" for demonyms (e.g. Indian, American). If this rule was followed, an inhabitant of Brazil should have been known (in Portuguese) as a Brasiliano. But uniquely among Portuguese demonyms, they are instead referred to as a Brasileiro, an occupation. That too stemmed from Loronha's time, when a brasileiro was a reference to a "brazilwood cutter", a job invariably undertaken by the Tupí Indians on the coast. The name of the occupation was simply extended to refer to all the inhabitants of the country.

While the brazilwood root of Brazil is widely accepted, it has been occasionally challenged. Among the alternative hypotheses is that it is named after the legendary island of "Brasil".^[5] Many 14th C. nautical maps often denoted a phantom island called insula brasil in the north Atlantic Ocean, usually circular in shape and located just southwest of Ireland. Although its source is uncertain, it is sometimes believed this "brasil" stems from Celtic word bress, which means 'to bless', and that the island was named "Hy-Brasil", or "Island of the Blessed".^[5] Such an island might have been spoken of in legendary old Irish immrama, that filtered into seafarer's tales and was incorporated by Italian cartographers, beginning with the 1325-30 portolan chart of Angelino Dalorto.^[6]

It is not, however, the only use of "brasil" to denote an Atlantic island. e.g. the 1351 Medici Atlas denotes two islands of "brasil", one traditionally placed off Ireland, the other in the Azores archipelago, in the location of Terceira Island. The 'brasil' in this case could be a reference either to the island's volcanic complex, or a reference to dragon's blood, a valuable red resin dye found on that island.

References

1. ^ CNRTL - Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales (French)
2. ^ Michaelis - Moderno Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa (Portuguese)
3. ^ iDicionário Aulete (Portuguese)
4. ^ e.g. the letter of Giovanni Matteo Cretico (June 27, 1501) and a diary entry of Marino Sanuto (Oct 12, 1502) call it "Terra di Papaga'"; on-board diarist Thomé Lopes (1502, p.160) refers to it as the "Ilha dos Papagaios vermelhos" ("island of the red parrots").
5. ^ ^{a b} Eduardo Bueno, Brasil: uma História (São Paulo: Ática, 2003; ISBN 8508082134), p.36. (Portuguese)
6. ^ "Since 1351 until at least 1721 the name Hy-Brazil could be seen on maps and globes. Until 1624, expeditions were still sent after it." Bueno, p.36

See also

• List of Brazil state name etymologies
• History of Brazil
• Culture of Brazil
• Brazil