One aspect of Brazilian place names derived from Tupi has not yet been properly analyzed: those including the Tupi postposition <i><b>-pe</b></i>,  meaning  ‘in’  or  ‘to’  (for  example,  in  Sergipe,  Iguape,  Itaípe,  Jacuípe,  etc.).  This  Tupi  postposition occasionally appears in the Portuguese as <i><b>-be</b></i>, 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.
Eduardo Navarro
CC BY 1.0
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://editora.museu-goeldi.br/bh/artigos/chv16n2_2021/toponimos(navarro).pdf">editora.museu-goeldi.br</a>