The Name Calheta
A short note on where the name of this Madeiran coast comes from.
Calheta: The Quick Answer
Calheta is a town and municipality on the south-west coast of Madeira, Portugal, and one of the island's oldest parishes, founded in 1430.
Calheta is an ordinary Portuguese noun: a small cove or inlet. It is a descriptive place-name, not a commemorative one, and the same word names settlements on São Jorge in the Azores and elsewhere in Portuguese territory.
Written Calheta in Portuguese and English alike, with no diacritics. To distinguish it from its Azorean namesakes it is usually written Calheta, Madeira.
Where the Name Comes From
Calheta means a small cove. The diminutive of cala, an inlet. Madeira was uninhabited when Portuguese navigators reached it in the early fifteenth century, so every place name here was given rather than inherited, and many of the earliest are plainly descriptive: what the settlers saw, in the words they had.
There is no deeper etymology to report, and we would rather say so than invent one. What the name does record is the thing the site was chosen for. A break in an otherwise unforgiving coast, which is also why the marina and the beach ended up here six centuries later.
Why We're Called Calheta.net
We named the site after the place it covers, Calheta, the coast, the levadas above it and the eight parishes around it. More on the municipality in our about guide.
Explore Calheta
The beach, the food and the levadas that give this coast its character.