CHAT: Br'ga (was: CHAT: Thanksgiving)

Paul Bennett wrote:
> >> The Br'ga are likely to mostly eat fish, turtles, lizards, birds and
> >> fruit, but I have no names for any of them yet. Maybe horse, too, and
> >> whatever they trade Poxtuga (Europeans) for.
> > <SNIP>
> >
I guess I need to dig
> around the Internet for names of explorers, and some good and likely
> Portuguese naming words for the island. I might just go with Ilha de
> Brugao, but I might come up with some other trait likely to have inspired
> a name.
>
Possible candidate: bruxa [bruSa] 'witch' (Span. bruja [bruxa]), where the
x::j suggests an older cluster, but I don't know the source of the word. VL
*brutica ???  IIRC, isn't Port. -ão also the augmentative ending, comparable
to Span. -ón(a) ??  Could the Br'gans have been noted for their black arts
:-)))?

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