Legendary Islands of the Atlantic: A Study of Medieval Geography

by William Henry Babcock

Another Suggested Derivation

On the whole, this seems the more likely channel of derivation of the name; or, if there were two such channels, then the more important one. For there is another suggested derivation, of which much has rightly been made and which we must by no means neglect. Red dyewood bore the name “brazil” in the early Middle Ages, a word derived, Humboldt believed,[74] by translation from the Arabic bakkam of like meaning, on record in the ninth century. He notes that Brazir, one form of the name, as we have seen, recalls the French braise, the Portuguese braza and braseiro, the Spanish brasero, the Italian braciere, all having to do with fire, which is normally more or less red like the dye. He does not know any tongue of medieval Asia which could supply brasilli or the like for dyewood. He suggests also the possibility of the word’s being a borrowed place name, like indigo or jalap, commemorating the region of origin, but cannot identify any such place. His treatment of the topic leaves a feeling of uncertainty, with a preference for some sort of transformation from “bakkam” which would yield “brazil” probably by a figure of speech.

The earliest distinctly recognizable mention of brazil as a commodity occurs in a commercial treaty of 1193 between the Duchy of Ferrara, Italy, and a neighboring town or small state, which presents grana de Brasill in a long list including wax, furs, incense, indigo, and other merchandise.[75] The same curious phrase, “grain of Brazil,” recurs in a quite independent local charta of the same country only five years later. Muratori, who garnered such things into his famous compilation of Italian antiquities, avowed his bewilderment over this strange phrase, asking what dyewood could be so called; and Humboldt, reconsidering the whole matter, was no more clear in mind. He calls attention to the fact that cochineal very long afterward bore the same name, but evidently without considering this any sort of solution, as, indeed, it could not well be, since it bears distinct reference to the South American Brazil, which was discovered and named centuries later. But the facts remain that grain does not naturally mean dyewood of any kind or in any form, that its recurrence in public documents proves it a well-established characterization of a known article of trade in the twelfth century, and that its presentation is such as to indicate a granular packaged material.

Perhaps an explanation may be found in Marco Polo’s experience and experiments nearly a century later than these Italian documents. Of Lambri, a district in Sumatra, he writes:

They also have brazil in great quantities. This they sow, and when it is grown to the size of a small shoot they take it up and transplant it; then they let it grow for three years, after which they tear it up by the root. You must know that Messer Marco Polo aforesaid brought some seed of the brazil, such as they sow, to Venice with him and had it sown there, but never a thing came up. And I fancy it was because the climate was too cold.[76]

The seeds of that Sumatran shrub might well pass for grain in the sense of a small granular object, as we say a grain of sand, for example. But, since the plant was not and perhaps could not be reared in Italy, it seems unlikely that the seed should be a valued item of commerce, regularly listed, bargained for, and taxed. We do not hear of its being put to use as a dye; and, indeed, the bark or wood of the plant seems far more promising for that purpose. Like our distinguished forerunners in considering this little mystery, we must set it aside as not yet fully solved.

“Grain of Brazil” is not repeated in any entry, so far as I know, after the end of the twelfth century; but brazil as a commodity figures rather frequently; for example, in the schedules of port dues of Barcelona and other Catalan seaboard towns in the thirteenth century, as compiled by Capmany.[77] Thus in 1221 we find “carrega de Brasill,” in 1243 “caxia de bresil,” and somewhat later (1252) “cargua de brazil,” the spelling varying as in the easy-going fourteenth- and fifteenth-century maps, the word being plainly the same. But the word and the thing were not confined to the Mediterranean, for a grant of murage rates of 1312 to the city of Dublin, Ireland, uses the words “de brasile venali.”[78] This is pretty far afield and shows that the knowledge and use of brazil as taxable merchandise was nearly Europe-wide. As a rule, it has been taken for granted that the word meant either some special kind of red dyewood or dyewood in general. Marco Polo’s account conforms rather to the former version, while Humboldt seems to lean toward the latter; but there is singularly little in the entries which tends to identify it as wood at all or in any way relate it thereto. Such words as carrega, caxia, cargua, show that it was put up in some kind of inclosure, and perhaps give the impression of comminution or at least absence of bulkiness. Most likely many kinds of red bark, red wood suitable for dyeing, and perhaps other vegetable products available for that purpose were sometimes included under the name brazil. People of that time were more concerned about results and means to attain them than about exactness in classification or definition.

It may well be that both lines of derivation of the name meet in the Brazil Island west of Ireland, that it was given a traditional Irish name by Irish navigators and tale tellers and mapped accordingly by Italians, who would naturally apply to it the meaning with which they were familiar in commerce and eastern story, so that the Island of Brazil, extolled on all hands, would come to mean along the Mediterranean chiefly the island where peculiarly precious dyewoods abounded. We know that Columbus was pleased to collect what his followers called brazil in his third and fourth voyages along American shores;[79] that Cabot felicitates himself on the prospect of finding silk and brazilwood by persistence in his westward explorations;[80] and that the great Brazil of South America received its final name as a tribute to its prodigal production of such dyes.