''Alfacinha'' is a term to denote a person from

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

, the

etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...

of which is unclear. The first known reference arises in the mid-19th century, in the book ''Travels in My Land'' by Almeida Garrett (1846), "For you shall be ''Alfacinhas'' forever, supposing that all the squares of this world are like the Palace Square ...". According to one explanation, the term comes from the fact that in the region of Lisbon,

lettuce Lettuce (''Lactuca sativa'') is an annual plant of the family Asteraceae mostly grown as a leaf vegetable. The leaves are most often used raw in Green salad, green salads, although lettuce is also seen in other kinds of food, such as sandwiche ...

(alface) is an abundant plant, and given the

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

origin of the word, has been cultivated on a large scale during the

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

period.

References

Demonyms Alfacinha Culture in Lisbon {{Portugal-stub