ISSN: 2317-2347 – v. 9, n. 2 (2020)
Todo o conteúdo da RLR está licenciado sob Creative Commons Atribuição 4.0 Internacional
replaced by the calque Paratinga, from pará - river + ting - white + -a - nominating suffix: white river.
Ubatã (State of Bahia) and Sapiranga (State of Rio Grande do Sul) – Many times, a place name of Tupi origin already incorporated in the Portuguese lexicon and replacing another place name designates a plant, an animal, an indigenous artifact, or an ethnic group. The district of Dois Irmãos, after being called Alfredo Martins, had its name changed to Ubatã, which designates various trees of the genus Astronium (from 'yba-atã - hard tree).
The same thing happened with the name Sapiranga, from a southern Brazilian municipality. In fact, the southern states had a strong influence of the Guarani culture, both because of its proximity to Paraguay and for the incursions of expeditions called “bandeiras” to the Jesuit missions established there. Guarani was even a language that influenced the general language of São Paulo. The term congonha, the name of a kind of chimarrão (sugarless tea made with bitter maté of the ancient São Paulo inhabitants, derives from this language and appears in the dictionary of Ancient Guarani by Montoya. The name Sapiranga, however, is not of Guarani origin, but it must derive from that General Language. This toponym was attributed to a district in the municipality of São Leopoldo in 1890 and it derives from arasá piranga, whose meaning is araçá vermelho (red arassá), a plant of the Mirtaceae family, that is, a name incorporated in the Brazilian Portuguese lexicon before that place name existed.
All these artificial toponyms, which are considered to be adequate, were attributed to places where the languages used in their creation were effectively spoken in the past.
Acajutiba (State of Bahia) – A less common way of creating artificial toponyms in Tupi consists in the substitution of hybrid names, incorporated to the Brazilian Portuguese lexicon, by a name completely Tupi in its origin. This happened with the village of Cajueiro (Cashew Tree; eiro is a Portuguese suffix), which in 1937 became a district of Esplanada and had its name changed to Acajutiba, from Tupi words akaîu + tyba: gathering of cashews.
