How did Brazil get its name?

Answer 1

From a wood that was harvested by the Portuguese to be used as a dye for fabric in the early 1500's. The wood name was Pau Brasil, with a strong red colour. Nowadays it is almost extinguished, it was once all along the Brazilian coast. The Atlantic forest, that harboured such woods, was almost all deforestated in the colonisation of Brazil. because a tipical tree used by the portugueses to paint tissue of red, this tree was called "pau BRASIL"
Brazil is named after a tree (pau-brasil) from which Portuguese, during the colonization period, extracted red colored liquid to paint fabric.

More specifically the name Brazil comes from "brasa" that means ember, "brasil" being the collective noun, meaning an amount of embers.

When the Portuguese first arrived, they called the land "Ilha de Vera Cruz" (Vera Cruz Island). When they realized that this land was not an island, they changed it's name to "Terra de Santa Cruz" (Land of Santa Cruz). However, to avoid losing the territory that France was now interested in obtaining, they started to extract wood from a tree named "Pau-Brasil". Due to the extraction from this tree, they changed the lands name to "Brasil" (Brazil).

Answer 2

The word: Some say it comes from a Celtic word that stands for some kind of land of sweetness.

The country: In colonial times there were lots of "pau-brasil" trees in Brazil, however, no one is exactly sure about this.