"Brazil" - What's in a Name?

Several weeks ago, I wrote a post about Seth Kugel who, in his role as The New York Times’ Frugal Traveler, is making a 13-week journey from his adopted hometown of São Paulo to New York City.

His colorful adventures, riddled with insights and humor, make for terrific armchair travel and inspired me to seek out more Kugel-isms. Following his cyber trail led me to GlobalPost, a site to which he is a frequent contributor from Brazil.

Among several posts that I enjoyed was one entitled “How Much Do You Know About Brazil?”

With his characteristic wit, Kugel began the post by taking Brazilians to task for their stereotyping of Americans as navel-gazing ignoramuses who, clueless about the world beyond their own large starred-and-striped backyard, continue to make fabulous blunders such as believing Brazilians speak Spanish and that the nation’s capital is Buenos Aires.

In order to defend Americans’ knowledge of global matters in general, and Brazilian matters in specific, Kugel, who was in New York City at the time, decided to put the Brazilian stereotype of Americans to the test by carrying out an informal survey. He randomly stopped 50 men and women on the streets of Manhattan, and asked them to name the capital of Brazil. Only 8 (16 percent) of his respondents guessed the correct answer: Brasília. The rest replied as follows:

Don’t know: 16

São Paulo: 13

Rio de Janeiro: 8

“Not Rio de Janeiro”: 1

La Paz: 1

Chile: 1

Paraguay: 1

Brazil City: 1

Inspired by Kugel’s premise and methodology, and by the fact that I too am currently in New York City, I decided to carry out a little improvised survey of my own, but one that was a little more open-ended and interpretive in nature. As someone with a foot in both countries and cultures, I’m always very curious about Americans’ impressions and images of Brazil (and vice-versa). For the objective purposes of this study, I decided to go after 50 strangers, of both sexes and a variety of ages, to whom I put the question:

“What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of ‘Brazil’?”

Except for one middle-aged couple on a bench in Central Park – who initially agreed to talk to me, but then fiercely announced that they “wouldn’t answer that kind of a question” – I received some delightfully unexpected answers along with some very predictable ones (it became apparent that the World Cup was still lingering in the collective consciousness).

Anyway, here, without further ado is what (50) Americans think of when they think of Brazil:

Soccer – 17

-“soccer” – 15
-“their loss in the soccer match” – 1
-“World Cup 2014” – 1

Arts/Culture – 6

“dancing” – 1
“samba” – 1
“Seu Jorge” – 1
“Astrud Gilberto” – 1
“Carnaval” – 1
“Portuguese” – 1

Free Associations – 6

“Fill – as in ‘fill my cup’ – because it rhymes with Brazil” – 1
“nuts” – 1
“the flag” - 2
“the color yellow” – 1

Brazilian Women – 5

“hot girls” – 1
“the hot women” – 1
“women in bathing suits” – 1
“nice big round girls’ asses” - 1
“women” – 1

Beauty – 4

“everything beautiful” – 2
“beautiful people” – 1
“beautiful – I want to go. That’s where I want to go for my honeymoon.” – 1

Literal Associations – 4
“the movie Brazil’” – 3
“the song Brazil” – 1

Drinks – 3

“the drinks” -1
“caipirinhas” – 1
“mojitos” – 1

Landscapes – 3

“beaches” – 2
“favelas” - 1

Personal Associations – 2

“my friend Eric who lived there for a while” – 1
“I just went to Brazil – it was fantastic. I loved it.” – 1

Epilogue: After taking part in the survey, a whopping 5 out of 50 participants stared at my wrist, and asked me where I got the bracelet fashioned out of aluminum beer tabs that I was wearing (pictured above):

Of course, I couldn't resist answering: “Brazil”.