Chimbote appears historically in the Introduction and Description of the Provinces belonging to the "Archbishopric of Lima" by Cosme Bueno in 1774. He mentions that the ancient town of Santa María de la Parrilla (Santa) had a small fishing village named Chimbote attached to it.
Don Antonio de Alcedo, in his famous "Geographical Dictionary of Indians" (1786), describes Chimbote as a cliff or islet in the South Sea off the coast of Peru, a Province and District of Santa, along with another called "Corcovado."
According to information from Dr. Antonio del Busto, historian and former Director of the INC (National Institute of Statistics and Census), the name Chimbote appears in the early 17th century. Chimbote is a Japanese word.
Having analyzed the word "Chimbote" and given the various assumptions about its origin, Some are not very serious, such as the one where some foreigners, trying to land in the bay and being unable to do so, expressed themselves as "People without a boat," from which it supposedly derives.
This allows us to determine that it comes from two words: "CHIMBA," which, according to the Quechua vocabulary of Gonzales Holguín (1608), means "The other part or side of the river, ravine, ditch, or long house crossed"; and "BOTE," the name of a small rowboat.
The book "Chimbote Through History" determines that it must have its origin in the word "Chimbar," a Peruvian word derived from "Chimba" and meaning "Band of the Front." CHIMBA comes from the Quechua word "CHIMPAY," which means "To wade or cross to the opposite shore."
The word Chimbote officially appeared around 1760, becoming official in 1860. It comes generically from "Chimbadores" or "Chimbote." The natives were called "Chimboteros," but starting in 1950, it began to be derived from "Chimbotanos." Families from Huanchaco, a cove in the department of La Libertad, requested permission from the authorities at the Port of Santa to enter Caleta Colorada. Among them were Pedro Beltrán, Ramón Arroyo, Eugenio Díaz, Manuel Morales, Julián Leytón, José Ignacio, and Rosario Mendoza.
In the 1813 census of Father Manuel Castellanos, the name of Pedro Nolasco Díaz, aged 80, appears, which is why he can be included as one of the first residents of this area.
Toponymy (other theories about the meaning of Chimbote)
1) The word Chimbote appears recorded earlier, in the mid-colonial era, in 1774; however, its meaning remains unknown to this day. Thus, in 1924, Enrique Tovar wrote:
"To some, it seems like a Moche word; others relate a tradition that we cannot help but find extravagant. It is this: When some foreign knights came to Caleta Colorada, ... they found no other vessel to take them to land than the well-known totora reed boats; [...] and upon returning to Lima, [...] they said, in their broken Spanish, that they had landed at this port, without a boat, shim-bote, Chimbote."
Enrique Tovar, Tierra de Promisión. Chimbote (1924)
2) The first speculations regarding a Quechua etymology of this place name date back to the 20th century. The first was explained by César Guardia in 1967:
Chimbote [comes] from chimpu, which means sign of wool or fence. According to Barranca, chimputi, whose ending -ti is a pluralizing sign, means enclosed. And this is the case with the port, states Juan Durand (1921) in his commentary. It is surrounded by a chain of hills that shelter its beautiful anchorage and form a perfect fence.
César Guardia, Quechua Dictionary (1967)
This explanation is contradicted by the grammar of Quechua itself, whether referring to Classical Quechua or Ancash Quechua, which never recorded a suffix -ti as a pluralizing element.
3) The other approach from Quechua corresponds to journalists José Gutiérrez and Demetrio Ramos, who in Chimbote a través de la historia (1969) identified the verb chimbar, a Quechua-language derived from <chimba>, without delving into the word's formation process. According to linguist Gary Parker (1976), Tsimpay means "to cross a river" in Ancash Quechua, and the nosorization of /p/ near /-m/ in the syllable coda position is known to Quechua, but the transformation of /a/ into <o> remains unclear, anomalous, as is the addition of -te, as is the case with Guardia's report.
4) In 1989, linguist Willem Adelaar proposed the first etymology with appropriate academic treatment, suggesting that Chimbote was a word of Culle origin, a now extinct Andean language that spread throughout the Sierra de La Libertad and northern Áncash and part of southeastern Cajamarca.
In this region, place names ending in -t are common, and other localities near Chimbote have also been found with the same -te ending, namely Macate and Guacate. The root of the word remains unknown, given that the Culle lexicon was not sufficiently recorded before its extinction.
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