How did the harbor at Rio de Janeiro get its name?

Answer 1

Along with Italian explorer and mapmaker Amerigo Vespucci, Portuguese explorer Gaspar de Lemos first saw the harbor on January 1, 1502. So he named it Rio de Janeiro [January River]. The bay was called Baia de Guanabara [Guanabara Bay]. For subsequent Portuguese settlers kept the name that the resident natives had given the bay. In Tupi-Guarani, goana-para described a bay that was similar to the sea. For the mouth of the bay was large enough that subsequent writers have suggested that the original Portuguese explorers mistook it for the mouth of a river. But other writers have suggested that the term river was automatically applied to any large body of water.