On 5 July 1935, the Board of the Instituto de Arqueologia, História e Etnografia [Institute of Archaeology, History and Ethnography] (IAHE) convened to approve the statutes of its scientific journal, the establishment of which had been planned since 1933 under decree no. 22.338 (dated 13 March), which created the Institute. At the suggestion of one of its leading figures, Manuel Heleno Júnior, the journal was named Ethnos , a Greek word meaning "culture" or "race," aligning with the IAHE’s scientific objectives. Manuel Heleno, director of the Dr. Leite de Vasconcelos Museu Etnológico [Ethnological Museum], claimed credit for the name in the Varia section of the inaugural 1935 issue. He also highlighted the delayed launch of the journal—three years after the institute’s founding—due to financial constraints, as it relied entirely on contributions from institute members. Heleno noted that the Portuguese journal secured the name Ethnos ahead of a similarly titled publication in Stockholm.

Thus began a journal linked to two of the most significant Portuguese scientific institutions of the 20th century: the Faculdade de Letras [Faculty of Arts and Humanities] of the University of Lisbon (established in 1911) and the Museu Etnológico (founded in 1893 and later renamed the Museu Etnológico do Dr. Leite de Vasconcelos [Dr. Leite de Vasconcelos Ethnological Museum], now the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia [National Archaeological Museum]). Since 1913, the museum had been part of the faculty and served as a cornerstone of the intellectual and civic contributions of José Leite de Vasconcelos, a seminal figure in Portuguese ethnography and archaeology, as well as his successor, Manuel Heleno Júnior. Ethnography and archaeology underwent significant developments within this context of institutional interchangeability, without which the genesis of Ethnos loses much of its contemporary significance.

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