In an alternate timeline where English sailors discovered these two island groupings, what are likely names for them? The Blue Isles and the Green Isles, respectively?
this.If they were discovered b the English first they'd likely have very different names, the Azores might be named the Atlantean Archipelago, or after some other mythical place in the Atlantic, though I'm not sure of what Cape Verde might be called.
If they're taken by/ceded to England from Portugal Cabo Verde might become the Cape Green Islands while the Açores would probably retain their anglicized name of The Azores.
The name "Azores" predates the Portuguese rediscovery. They will probably keep this.
this.
plus you pretty much used the english names in the OP
An Açor is Portuguese for Northern Goshawk. Its etymology is however disputed. The name was featured in Medieval (pre-official discovery) maps along with some other real and phantom islands.Where did it come from then? I thought it was the Portuguese word for "blue"....
If they were discovered b the English first they'd likely have very different names, the Azores might be named the Atlantean Archipelago, or after some other mythical place in the Atlantic, though I'm not sure of what Cape Verde might be called.
With that logic shouldn't the West Indies been named after Antillia in English maps, especially given how Puerto Rico and the Virgin islands fit maps made about the mythical sets of islands?
Well, they are called the Antilles IOTL..
But otherwise in the Azores case it'd be more so since Europe had the legend of Atlantis, and since they thought it would be in the Atlantic, finding a bunch of uninhabited islands in the smack middle of the North Atlantic it's easy to see how they'd think they were related to Atlantis, especially if it's during a phase when mythology was more popular than normal.
That was partial sarcasm as the English named their holdings after the seas, whatever the previous inhabitants called them, and nautical terms. They didn't call them the British Antilles to my knowledge.
Well they did'nt do so with their posessions in the Caribbean, they used the names West Indies and Leeward Islands their.
An Açor is Portuguese for Northern Goshawk. Its etymology is however disputed. The name was featured in Medieval (pre-official discovery) maps along with some other real and phantom islands.
EDIT: I tried and failed to find a pre-discovery map that featured the Azores that I had seen. I think it was Genoese. If so, it makes sense that the etymology was indeed blue and a later Portuguese corruption upon discovery shifted the word to its current meaning. There are no Goshawks in the Azores so the traditional explanation was that the discoverers confused Kites with Goshawks.
I mixed things up, I'm afraid. The Portuguese archipelago that features the modern name in pre-Portuguese maps is Madeira not Azores.It would be great to see such a map.
Unlike the other Macaronesian archipelagos, Cape Verde was largely unknown before the Portuguese discovery.Maybe the names of the fictional islands could apply to Cape Verde and/or Madeira?
It wasn't called british antilles, but common people just called them "the antilles" or west indies.That was partial sarcasm as the English named their holdings after the seas, whatever the previous inhabitants called them, and nautical terms. They didn't call them the British Antilles to my knowledge.