The territory where today the city of Carnaba is located belonged to its founding Joo Gomes Dos Reis. In 1850, when arriving in the place, it constructed its residence, a cemetary and a chapel in honor the Saint Antonio, giving beginning to the local povoamento. The town received initially the name from Lagoon of the Baroque one due to existence of a decline covered of carnaubeiras. However, the population instead of saying carnaba, pronounced the word carnaba. Therefore, one gives credit that the name of the city is one corruptela of the Carnaba word. The officialization of the name occurred in 1860, through a Missa Saint for the Foot. Ibiapina, in the Chapel of Saint Antonio. The lands where currently it is the City of Carnaba were inhabited originally by the Cariris indians who, with the arrival of the white man, had been to the few abandoning the region.
Among others indicative, the presence of these aboriginals is confirmed by registrations (still today conserved) that they had left in rocks and furnas of the Mountain ranges of the Big hole and Mantinha. With the expulsion of the indians of its lands, the property of the territory passed to the House of the Tower of Garci’a D' Avila whose book of tumble makes references the Farms Carnaba Velha and Oitizeiro, that had been leasehold to Captain Manoel de Souza Diniz. The population, however, would only start to appear in the second half of Century XIX, after the arrival of the Portuguese Joo Gomes Dos Reis and the Saturnine lieutenant Heifer that had fixed residence there. Magic with fertile lands and water in abundance in the region, Joo Gomes Dos Reis mounted a farm the one that called, initially, of Farm Lagoon of the Baroque one. In 1870, the farmer ordered to raise in the place a Chapel under the invocation of Saint Antonio and constructed, also, a small cemetary.