Northern Aymaran Toponymy, Revisited

Abstract

Andeanists have long suspected that the Aymaran language family once extended to the north of its northernmost surviving varieties in Central Peru, a proposal we call the Northern Aymaran Hypothesis. This article examines the source of evidence most frequently invoked in support of it: the presence of putative Aymaran toponyms north of the family’s current geographic distribution. It presents a novel methodology that does not propose specific etymologies but instead utilizes several parameters for assessing the plausibility of a particular toponym originating in an Aymaran language, applied to distinguishable toponymic components: interpretability as Aymaran, non-sharedness with other languages, reconstructability in Proto-Aymaran, number of phonemes, and semantic plausibility. These patterns are assessed across thousands of official Peruvian place names, resulting in a gradient Aymaran toponymic plausibility score for each name. We conclude that there is some faint evidence of a Northern Aymaran toponymic layer but that interpreting its relative chronology is challenging.