Short answers, pulled from the story.
Fernão Mendes Pinto (c. 1509-1583) was a Portuguese explorer and writer best known for his autobiographical memoir Peregrinação (Pilgrimage), published posthumously in 1614. He traveled through Africa, the Middle East, India, China, and Japan, and his account is considered the most complete European record of sixteenth-century Asian history.
The nickname is a Portuguese wordplay on Pinto's name using the verb mentir, meaning "to lie." It translates as "Fernão, are you lying? I am lying." The saying arose because many of Pinto's travel accounts were considered so far-fetched that contemporaries doubted their truth.
Pinto claimed he introduced the arquebus to Japan after being shipwrecked on the island of Tanegashima in 1543. Historians have established that other Portuguese traders, including António Mota and Francisco Zeimoto, arrived in Japan a year before Pinto. The firearm was reproduced widely in Japan and became known as the tanegashima, named for the island.
Peregrinação was published in 1614, thirty-one years after Pinto died on the 8th of July 1583. Pinto began writing the memoir in 1569 and the book was published posthumously by friar Belchior Faria.
Pinto returned to Japan in 1549 alongside Saint Francis Xavier and formally joined the Society of Jesus in 1554, donating a large portion of his trading wealth to the mission. Between 1554 and 1556 he served as the Viceroy of Portuguese India's ambassador to the daimyo of Bungo on Kyūshū. He left the Jesuits in 1557.
A crater on Mercury was named Mendes Pinto in 1978. A high school in Almada, Portugal, built in 1965, bears his name. In 2011, a 2 euro coin was issued to mark the five-hundredth anniversary of his birth. In March 2026, a bronze replica of a statue of Pinto was unveiled in Hiji, Oita Prefecture, Japan.