In a town in the south of the Brazilian province of Minas Gerais called Don Viçoso, there lived a young widow called Maria Rosalina. She had a baby son and loved him dearly, but he wouldn’t speak. Even when he was 2 years old, he had still not said a word. So Maria Rosalina called together the local benzedeiras, local women who performed rituals on moonlit nights. They gathered around the boy’s cot and intoned the traditional incantation: “Bili-bilu-teteia, Bili-bilu-teteia.”
The boy remained silent. So they tried again, and again. Finally, after several weeks of chanting on numerous moonlit nights, the boy called out: “Bilé.” And so that became his nickname.
Bilé adored football. He eventually became a goalkeeper and played for Vasco da São Lourenço. A local man would take his young son, only 3 or 4 years old, to watch training sessions. The boy, then known as Edson Arantes do Nascimento, liked playing in goal and whenever he made a save, he would call out his hero’s name. Except that he mangled the name, changing the B to a P: “Pilé, Pilé.” When the boy then moved to Bauru in the state of São Paulo, his Minas Gerais accent meant his teammates misheard his shout. And so was born the most famous nickname in football: Pelé.
