when friar antônio do desterro survived a drowning at sea and landed on the beach by the shrine, he attributed his salvation to a miracle by the saint in the shrine: nossa senhora de copacabana.

he then had a chapel built for the saint, and so the beach and the neighborhood took their name from the church built in the 17th century to honor our lady of copacabana.

from that point on, the area started to develop as the population of rio de janeiro grew, until the early twentieth century, when development accelerated much more rapidly.