ISSN: 2317-2347 – v. 9, n. 2 (2020)
Todo o conteúdo da RLR está licenciado sob Creative Commons Atribuição 4.0 Internacional
We do not deal here with hybrid toponyms of non-indigenous origin such as Itainópolis (State of Piauí) or Cotriguaçu (MT). We will not regard the "pseudo-Tupi" place names, i.e., those that are compositions and are only apparently of indigenous origin, such as Jussara (BA), which is a mélange of Juscelino and Sara, first names of a former president of Brazil and his wife, respectively.
We were thus able to classify the artificial place names of Tupi origin in Brazil in two main categories:
A. Appropriate place names:
These are correctly formed toponyms assigned to places where the languages from which they originated were effectively spoken in the past. Or, they are names of Tupi origin already incorporated in the Portuguese lexicon. If composed, they obey the composition rules of the Tupi origin languages in which they were created.
B. Inappropriate place names:
a. Geographically inadequate – They are formed correctly from a grammatical point of view, but are unduly attributed to places where the languages from which they originated were never spoken.
b. Linguistically inadequate – They are formed incorrectly, without respect to the rules of composition of the languages in which they were created or with wrong spelling, semantics, etc. They can also be hybrid names, formed by words from more than one indigenous language, a fact caused by the ignorance on the part of their creator of the differences between them. Nevertheless, such toponyms name places where the languages used in their creation were spoken in the past.
c. Geographically and linguistically inadequate – These are names unduly attributed to places where the languages from which they originated were never spoken and which were poorly formed linguistically, without respect for the rules of composition of the languages in which they were created, or with incorrect spelling, semantics, etc. They can also be hybrid names, formed with words from more than one indigenous language of a Tupi origin.
