Cartography and Toponymy in Rio de Janeiro State (XVI - XX) Preliminary Results and Future Perspetives

Abstract

  The State of Rio de Janeiro has an area of 43696 km2 today, with 92 municipal districts and 185 districts, as well as
hundreds of villages and small settlements. There is a very dense hydrographic network dispersed on its territory, which
allowed the penetration and occupation of the countryside during the colonization period. Its orography is defined by
plane areas, hills and mountainous, with several massifs. Its first place names date from the end of 1501 and beginning
of 1502, besides the more known, Rio de Janeiro, which denominated the current Bay of Guanabara. The occupation,
however, only began in 1503, with an administration installed in Cabo Frio. The colonization of its territory began
when the hereditary captaincies were created, in1534, seeking the colonization, the territory administration and the
protection against foreign invasions as well. At that time, however, the territory of the Captaincy of Rio de Janeiro had
several changes, relating to its limits. As province, from 1759, some changes still occurred, and the consolidation of the
territory only ended in the middles of the 19th Century, just during the Empire. This paper aims to draw a link among
the Historical Cartography of Rio de Janeiro State, its territory and its toponymy, through a research accomplishing a
study of its development searching the identification and analysis of the extracted place names on the several analyzed
historical maps. The territory of Rio de Janeiro has a vast cartography, since the 17th Century until the current days,
however, there are not many maps relating to the 16th Century. In that way, it is possible, with the identification of
place names in the maps, the accomplishment of analyses that allow inferring important conclusions on the occupation
way, the names´ structures, toponymic motivations among others. The developed methodology defined the identification and storage of the place names, in a space time database, according a local coordinates system, relating to each
worked map. Each geographical name was characterized by a punctual coordinate, even if a different geometry was
associated. The analyses made on the maps, were relating to names distribution, regarding space occupation, density
and feature type. Relating to the geographical names, the aspects of the original language and toponymic motivation
were analyzed. It was still analyzed the toponymic changes on some of the geographical names over time. All place
names will be included in space time database of the State of Rio de Janeiro. This research continues the research on
Historical Cartography and Toponymy of the State of Rio de Janeiro, developed by the Laboratory of Cartography of
the Department of Geography of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.