24 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



Limerick, and also apparently indicated on at least one map which 

 distinctly shows Brazil also, farther afield. 



The name, Brazil, has been the subject of much discussion and 

 has led many on a quite misleading trail. For a generation or so 

 after the first appearance in cartography of the original Brazil off 

 Ireland, so far as known, the maps .begin to show a second or emula 

 tive Brazil off Portugal, and with much the same relation to Lisbon 

 as the other had to Limerick. Its name varies, as might be expected, 

 from Brazi and Bracir to Buxelle, for the word was a foreign 

 importation. Probably this island * was Terceira of the Azores, 

 where dye-woods abounded and which seems to be the Bracir oppo 

 site Spain of the 1367 Pizigani map, a mountain there still bearing the 

 name Brazil. A second island in that group was named the same 

 perhaps for like reason, any kind of red dye-wood being known as 

 Brazil-wood ; and there were other instances of such naming, the 

 latest holding its ground sturdily even yet in eastern South America. 

 It is evident that from the middle of the fourteenth to the beginning 

 of the sixteenth century, any region named Brazil would be expected 

 to yield Brazil-wood or other vegetable dye, such as orchilla, in justifi 

 cation of its name. So it is not surprising that we should be bidden to 

 seek the derivation of the first Brazil in just such material for dyeing. 



But here the clue fails ; for the origin of the word itself is 

 still to seek. The only tenable explanation thus far given makes 

 Brazil a coalescence of two long obsolete Irish Gaelic words, breas 

 (Prince) and ail (noble besides other meanings). Breas also having 

 been in ancient use as the proper name of many chiefs and eminent 

 men. The Irish local name usually prefixes I, or Hy, meaning 

 country,&quot; and more particularly &quot; island,&quot; from Inis, the Gaelie 

 equivalent of Insula, Isola, Ysola, or Ilha. It might not be safe to 

 translate I. de Brazil as the Island of the Noble Prince or the Xoble 

 and Princely Island ; but the general intention of extolling its merits 

 is undeniable, and, on the fifteenth century map of Fra Mauro we 

 even find a Latin legend declaring it to be Berzil the fortunate island 

 of the Irish. In all this there is certainly something more than admira 

 tion of a salable commodity which might be gathered by the shipload 

 and used for dyeing. Furthermore, nobody would have thought, in 

 the beginning, of expecting such dye-woods or equivalent material 

 approximately in the latitude of Ireland. After centuries of associa 

 tion between the name and the article, the case was very different 

 (see note 4, p. 176). 



1 M. D Avezac : Discoveries of the Middle Ages, p. 35. 



