Vasco da Gama Vasco da Gama Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (; c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea. His initial voyage to India (1497–1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans and therefore, the West and the Orient. Da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India was significant and opened the way for an age of global imperialism and for the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire in Asia. Traveling the ocean route allowed
Portuguese name also bear surnames that cannot be used to distinguish them from the older Catholic Portuguese families. Using tree names as surnames was not a common practice among converted or non-converted Portuguese Jews, before or after their expulsion in 1497. These are some most frequent surnames in Portugal: According to a large scale study of names extracted from various social networking websites, the most common surnames in Brazil are: According to the newspaper Público, the most common given names in Portugal, for 105,000 children born in 2008 were: According to the IBGE the most common given names in Brazil in 2010