The risks of a “forgetful” linguistics: on the puquina etymology of “inca”

• Autor: Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2021
• Institución: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Repositorio: Revistas - Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:ojs.pkp.sfu.ca:article/23843
• Enlace del recurso: http://revistas.pucp.edu.pe/index.php/lexis/article/view/23843
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: Inca; Filología andina; Etimología; Morfo vacío; Puquina; Andean philology; Etymology; Empty-morph

In this article, I would like to propose the original Puquina affiliation of the name <inca>, a term that was successively adopted by Aymara, Quechua, and Spanish, going through a series of formal and semantic adjustments and readjustments, as a consequence of persistent idiomatic re-accommodations, both spontaneous and deliberate. After offering some background on the subject, my discussion is organized into two detailed sections: in the first, I will offer the etymology of the term in form and meaning, proposing its pristine Puquina affiliation; in the second, I will thoroughly examine and discuss the thesis recently propounded by César Itier (2019), in which he attributes a Quechua origin to the term. I will demonstrate that the proposal put forward by my colleague lacks linguistic and philological support, proving how adherence to the thesis of the so-called “Quechuismo primitivo” (Cerrón-Palomino 2019) can lead to truly unsustainable conclusions not only from a purely linguistic point of view but also, and in a more dramatic way, from its purported interpretative projections regarding the socio-political and organizational Inca institutions.