Carandiru

Portuguese

Carandiru (sense 1)

Carandiru (sense 2)

Carandiru (sense 3)

Etymology

Uncertain. Eduardo de Almeida Navarro suggests it to be borrowed from Old Tupi karaná (“carandá”, a palm tree) +‎ 'i (diminutive suffix) +‎ ry (“river”), literally “river of the carandaís, small carandás”, but he acknowledges *karanda'i is not attested.^[1] The use of ry instead of 'y is quite unusual, and the evolution from *Karanda'iry to Carandiru requires a series of phonetic changes that together are not trivial. A word that is attested and phonetically similar to Carandiru is Old Tupi karanderu, itself borrowed from Portuguese carneiro; in his 2013 dictionary, Navarro does not take into account the only document that contains a record of this word. Being from Língua Geral Paulista, it is geographically compatible with the location of the Carandiru Stream.

In any case, the name of the neighborhood is derived from the name of the stream, and the name of the penitentiary is derived from the name of the neighborhood.

Pronunciation

(Brazil) IPA^(key): /ka.ɾɐ̃.d͡ʒiˈɾu/

(Portugal) IPA^(key): /kɐ.ɾɐ̃.diˈɾu/

Rhymes: -u
Hyphenation: Ca‧ran‧di‧ru

Proper noun

Carandiru m

a stream in São Paulo, Brazil
a neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil
(now historical) a former penitentiary in São Paulo, Brazil, notable for being the site of the Carandiru massacre

References

^ Eduardo de Almeida Navarro (2013) “Carandiru”, in Dicionário de tupi antigo: a língua indígena clássica do Brasil [Dictionary of Old Tupi: The Classical Indigenous Language of Brazil] (overall work in Portuguese), São Paulo: Global, →ISBN, page 555, column 1

[1] Eduardo de Almeida Navarro (2013) “Carandiru”, in Dicionário de tupi antigo: a língua indígena clássica do Brasil [Dictionary of Old Tupi: The Classical Indigenous Language of Brazil] (overall work in Portuguese), São Paulo: Global, →ISBN, page 555, column 1

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