Brasil, also known as Hy-Brasil and several other variants, is a phantom island said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland. Irish myths described it as cloaked in mist except for one day every seven years, when it becomes visible but still cannot be reached. Etymology The etymology of the names Brasil and Hy-Brasil is unknown, but in Irish tradition it is thought to come from the Irish (meaning "descendants (i.e., clan) of Bresail"), one of the ancient clans of northeastern Ireland. cf. Old Irish: : island; : beauty, worth, great, mighty. Despite the similarity, the name of the country Brazil (Portuguese: ) has no connection to the mythical islands (although J. R. R. Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories" linked them). The South American country was at first named Ilha de Vera Cruz (Island of the True Cross) and later Terra de Santa Cruz (Land of the Holy Cross) by the Portuguese navigators who arrived there. After some decades, it started to be called "Brazil" due to the exploitation of native brazilwood, at that time the only export of the land. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called , with the word commonly given the etymology "red like an ember", formed from Latin ("ember") and the suffix (from or ). Appearance on maps Nautical charts identified an island called "Bracile" west of Ireland in the Atlantic Ocean as far back as 1325, in a portolan chart by Angelino Dulcert. It also appeared on the Catalan Atlas, in 1375. Later it appeared as in the Venetian map of Andrea Bianco (1436), attached to one of the larger islands of a group of islands in the Atlantic. This was identified for a time with the modern island of Terceira in the Azores, where a volcanic mount at the bay of its main town, Angra do Heroismo, is still named Monte Brasil. A Catalan chart of about 1480 labels two islands "Illa de brasil", one to the south west of Ireland (where the mythical place was supposed to be) and one south of "Illa verde" or Greenland. On maps the island was shown as being circular, often with a central strait or river running east–west across its diameter. Despite the failure of attempts to find it, this appeared regularly on maps lying south west of Galway Bay until 1865, by which time it was called Brasil Rock. Map gallery Searches for the island