Page:Artificial Indigenous Place Names in Brazil.pdf/14



From these words, we can see how great was the unpreparedness of the author to deal with the Tupi language, ancient or modern. His Portuguese Tupi-Guarani Vocabulary contributed substantially to the disorientation of people interested in Tupinology. His ignorance of the grammar of these languages was amply demonstrated in the words above.

For the formation of the place name Umuarama, Silveira Bueno took the Nheengatu term sumuara, "friend", unduly removed its prefix S- and added the form rama, a variant of retama. Sumuararama, in fact, would be a Nheengatu name. Removing the prefix S-, however, the composition becomes meaningless. Moreover, the fact of assigning a name in Nheengatu (an Amazonian language) to a locality of southern state of Paraná is geographical nonsense.

Mairiporã (State of São Paulo) – The name of that city of São Paulo state is a hybridism, formed by the composition of a word taken from General Amazonian Language (mairi, city) and from a Guarani word (porã, beautiful). It was artificially created by state law in 1948 and replaced the old and spontaneous name Juqueri. The substitution of such Tupi origin name was due to the depreciative sense that this toponym assumed with the installation of a great psychiatric colony in that locality, founded in 1898 by Doctor Francisco Franco da Rocha. Thus, a toponym emerged from languages that were never spoken in that region of Brazil.

Itacajá (State of Tocantins) – The territory of that municipality in Tocantins state was traditionally inhabited by Craós Indians, who were ministered to by Francisco Colares. A settlement originated that became a district in 1938 and a municipality in 1953. That toponym derives from the name of a waterfall called Cajá (name of a tree, a species of flowering plant in the family Anacardiaceae), in the Manoel Alves River, which runs through that locality. Cajá was a spontaneous, simple name, motivated by the existence of that plant, also called cajazeira (cajá tree). The name Itacajá, artificially created with ancient Tupi roots, has an inadequate meaning, because it means stone cajá and furthermore, it was attributed to a place where ancient Tupi and General Languages were never spoken.

Conclusion

The artificial place naming in ancient Tupi and in General Languages co-exists in Brazil with spontaneous toponymy, and this fact goes unnoticed by many. This phenomenon hypertrophied the Tupi cultural influence, which indeed was considerable, in the formation of Brazilian civilization. It did not affect, as seen before, the nomination of physical and natural DOI logo.svg http://dx.doi.org/10.35572/rlr.v9i2.1700 265