Place names with the Tupi postposition -pe in Brazil

Abstract

One aspect of Brazilian place names derived from Tupi has not yet been properly analyzed: those including the Tupi postposition -pe, meaning ‘in’ or ‘to’ (for example, in Sergipe, Iguape, Itaípe, Jacuípe, etc.). This Tupi postposition occasionally appears in the Portuguese as -be, in names such as Capibaribe, Peruíbe, and Camaragibe. Antônio Lemos Barbosa (1937), an important twentieth-century scholar, was the first to draw attention to the existence of these place names in an attempt to explain them. Barbosa attributed this linguistic formation to the colonizers rather than the Tupi indians living on the coast during the early centuries of Brazilian occupation, and this article verifies his suggestion. Analysis of texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and comparisons with other indigenous languages confirms an origin in Old Tupi, and that these place names are some of the oldest found in Brazil.