Page:Artificial Indigenous Place Names in Brazil.pdf/2



''com profundos efeitos sobre a cultura ocidental em geral e sobre a cultura brasileira, em particular. Este artigo analisa tal toponímia artificial, fazendo uma tentativa de sua classificação.''

PALAVRAS-CHAVES: Toponímia Artificial; Tupi Antigo; Línguas Gerais.

1 Introduction

Most of the place names that make up the Brazilian toponymic system originate from the Portuguese language. Portuguese, as the language of an overseas empire, would supplant the indigenous languages and the “Línguas Gerais” (General Languages) spoken throughout Brazil. The only region in Brazil where Portuguese was not dominant until the second half of the 19th century was Amazonia. As a result of the great migration from northeastern Brazil to Amazonia during the Rubber Cycle, Nheengatu lost its dominance to Portuguese. The year 1877 was, in fact, when this finally occurred. The famous “Drought of the Two Sevens,” in the northeastern Brazil, was the event that changed the linguistic profile of Amazonia, characterized by the migration of 500,000 people who were monolingual in Portuguese.

Nevertheless, the languages of aboriginal peoples would also play an important role in the Brazilian toponymic system. Among the indigenous languages and the general languages of indigenous origins, four were fundamental for the naming of places in Brazil: ancient Tupi of the coast, the General Language of Amazonia, the General Language of São Paulo, and Nheengatu. In fact, ancient Tupi was a matrix language of other supra-ethnic languages that developed historically from it starting in the 17th century, when the colonization of Brazil interior began. Such toponymy is one of the most visible documentations of the indigenous ancestry of Brazilian society.

When dealing with toponyms of indigenous origin, we are here considering only the name from the point of view of its form, as a lexeme. This is to avoid ambiguities, making one posit an indigenous “name giver” that often did not exist. Furthermore, it is necessary to consider that the names of indigenous origin that we are dealing with here follow Portuguese phonological processes. Thus, phonemes that do not exist in Portuguese are realized in various ways when toponyms are created to name the national territory. This is the case, for example, with the phoneme /ɨ/ of ancient Tupi, which is realized in Portuguese as /i/ or /u/. The same occurs regarding the phoneme /β/, which is realized as /b/ or /v/. Concerning the glottal plosive /Ɂ/, it disappears in Portuguese names of indigenous origin. DOI logo.svg http://dx.doi.org/10.35572/rlr.v9i2.1700 253