Not many countries are named after commodities. There is Argentina, from the Latin word for silver; Cote d'Ivoire, a reminder that nature's endowments do not always lead to prosperity; Panama and Uruguay, whose names may come from indigenous words for fish; and also Brazil, which became known for its Brazil wood, the source of a valuable dye. Prior to that Italian merchants apparently called it the land of parrots. Brazil has already lived through several commodities booms: precious metals in the 17th century, sugar in the 18th and coffee in the 19th. Yet none of them benefited the country as much as the current one.
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