Quingnam language
extinct and unclassified language of the Chimú
Quingnam (also misspelled Quignam), also called Pescadora (though this name is ambiguous) and Chimú, is an extinct, poorly attested Indigenous language formerly spoken by the Chimú people on the coast of northern Peru. After the Spanish conquest, the language went into decline and was extinct by 1763. It is virtually unknown, with a list of numerals, proper names and a few other scattered words constituting the only data on this language. The language has been historically conflated with Mochica, another extinct language spoken in coastal Peru, but is completely distinct and unrelated to it.
Etymology
There are various possible etymologies for the name Quingnam, which is likely an exonym. The first links it to the Mochica word king 'to spin'. The name would thus mean 'to spin, for spinning', with the assumption of a metaphorical link between spinning and speech. Peruvian linguist Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, however, rejects this as a popular etymology.
Salas García (2010) suggests that quingnam may mean 'fisherman' in Quingnam, but the word for 'fisherman' in locations where Quingnam was spoken is recorded as guaxme, guachemin[es] or uachime instead.
According to Matthias Urban (2019), another etymology can be derived from the name of a person named Quin Namo.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Quingnam language” is extinct and unclassified language of the Chimú. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Quingnam, language and extinct, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7416165. The Library of Congress control number is sh85023976. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1763, 2010 and 2019.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Quingnam language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.