Madeira (origin of the name)

Speaking of the discovery, Gaspar Frutuoso says: ‘… which they called Madeira because of the great, dense woodland with which it was covered…’. It may be inferred from this account that it was the discoverers themselves who gave the name Madeira to the unknown island on which they had landed. Elsewhere the same Frutuoso says: ‘The Infante, seeing the samples and hearing the account of the island that they gave him, gave it the name it now has, the island of Madeira…’ This must surely be understood to mean that Prince Henry the Navigator merely confirmed the name by which the first navigators had called the land they had discovered. Another passage of the Saudades states expressly that it was the discoverer João Gonçalves Zarco who called this island Madeira: ‘to which the said captain gave the name of Madeira’. And he says so still more categorically in another place in the same work: ‘. its most fortunate first captain, João Gonçalves Zargo, gave it this name because of the very dense and great woodland with which it was covered, and because it was full of an infinite quantity of wood’.

Unlike what happened with other islands and lands that were discovered, this island and archipelago were never known by any name other than the one they had from the beginning. It is true that Dr Gaspar Frutuoso states ‘that, because it was so very rugged, they say its name was, or should have been, Ilha das Pedras’, but from this emphatic manner of speaking on the part of the historian of the islands it may be concluded that he did not mean to assert that the island had borne that name. Apart from this passing reference by Frutuoso, which does not amount to an assertion, that name is not known in any other writings, ancient or modern, as a designation for the island or archipelago of Madeira.

Let us hear a question put by Pinheiro Chagas: ‘Was this the name that would most naturally have occurred to him? Since the word madeira [TN: madeira is Portuguese for ‘wood’ or ‘timber’.] refers especially to the trunks of trees already felled and prepared for their proper uses, was it not strange that this should be the name that immediately served Gonçalves Zarco to designate the island, rather than Island of the Groves, Island of the Flowers or Island of the Woods?’

This question from the illustrious historian does not invalidate the simple and artless, but true, account given by Gaspar Frutuoso.