The Aymara word jawira ‘river’: etymology and toponymic presence; [A palavra aimara jawira ‘rio’: etimologia e presença toponímica]

Cajavilca E. · Lengua y Sociedad (2024) · DOI: 10.15381/lengsoc.v23i2.27671

Resumen

From a linguistic-historical perspective, the Aymara word jawira ‘river’ was approached in order to reconstruct its etymology and show its use in toponymy. To do so, existing published vocabularies, grammars and colonial sources on Aymara languages were used. Government geographic databases were used to search for and select the respective toponyms. It was found that the term jawira is etymologically a verbal stem: *jawi ‘to flow’ +-ra ‘sequential distributive’ = ‘to flow continuously’. This was reinterpreted to express the agent who executes the action of flowing, that is, ‘river’. Various additional examples demonstrate the occurrence of this phenomenon of semantic reinterpretation. Regarding its dialectal affiliation, lexicographers have only reported jawira in Collao Aymara. There was also a parallel construction, jawiri ‘river’, which did not prosper beyond the 17th century in the Collavino lexicon, much less in toponymy. Finally, the toponyms with jawira revealed that jawira was indeed a generic element, but circumscribed around the Collao geography. The absence of jawira-toponyms outside the Andean Plateau would indicate that Collao Aymara ancestors who came from the northwest used another word for ‘river’. Hypothetically, this would have been */mayu/ ‘river’ (which is the same word used in Central or Yauyino Aymara). This hypothesis opens the way to re-evaluate the proto-Quechua origin of */mayu/. © Los autores.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos