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Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker
We have a horrible one like that. Brazil.
It's a common enough surname in St. John's, also the name of a street and a square.
It's pronounced such that it rhymes with frazzle.
No one would pronounce the country name that way, but for some reason that's how the surname is said.
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the etimology of the word is different.
the surname is of irish celtic origin.
https://www.houseofnames.com/Brazil-history?A=54323-292
can´t copy and paste from the page above, so you must click the link to see other spellings of the same surname, origins, etc.
the country name however comes from Pau-Brazil (Brazilwood), the first product the portuguese explorers found that was good to export to Europe.
the wood was good quality for ship building and red as ember, and because of that, the name "brazil wood", where Brazil comes from portuguese/latin BRASA (ember). (official name of the land given by the portuguese was Terra da Santa Cruz (Land of the Holy Cross), but the informal name given by traders, land of Brazil (land of Brazil wood) then ended up becoming more popular.
so, there is a good reason for pronouncing both words differently (celtic origin for surname, latin origin for country name). ALTHOUGH there are some not confirmed stories about the country being named after Hy-Brasil,
Quote:
The etymology of the names Brasil and Hy-Brasil are unknown, but in Irish tradition it is thought to come from the Irish Uí Breasail (meaning "descendants (i.e., clan) of Breasal"), one of the ancient clans of northeastern Ireland. cf. Old Irish: Í: island; bres: beauty, worth, great, mighty.[2]
Despite the similarity, the name of the country Brazil has no connection to the mythical islands. It 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 discovered the land. After some decades, it started to be called "Brazil" (Brasil, in Portuguese) due to the exploitation of native Brazilwood, at that time the only export of the land. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called pau-brasil, with the word brasil commonly given the etymology "red like an ember", formed from Latin brasa ("ember") and the suffix -il (from -iculum or -ilium)
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which makes me guess if the surname origin is not related to Hy-Brasil. (not cited in the website I linked before)
More interesting yet is the fact the irish spelling of the mythical land matches the portuguese spelling of the country (with S instead of Z)