Chimbote

About Chimbote

Chimbote [tʃimˈbote]; Quechua: Chimputi) is a city in northwestern Peru. It is the largest city in the Ancash Region and the tenth most populous in Peru. With a population of 425,367 in 2017, it is the capital of both Santa Province and Chimbote District. The city has an altitude of 4 meters.

The city is located on the coast in Ferrol Bay, 130 km south of Trujillo and 420 kilometers (260 mi) north of Lima on the North Pan-American highway. It is the start of a chain of important cities on the Peruvian north coast like Trujillo, Chiclayo and Piura. The advantages of this geographic location made Chimbote into a transshipment junction for the Santa River valley. The city is the second most important port city after Callao.

In the book Chimbote Through History (1969), José Gutiérrez and Demetrio Ramos refer to the verb chimbar, a Quechuan word, without delving into the etymology. According to the American linguist Gary Parker (1976), tsimpay means "to cross a river" in Ancashino Quechua, and the voicing of /p/ in the vicinity of /-m/ in syllabic coda position is known for Quechua, but remains in the transformation of /a/ into "o", anomalous, like the same addition of...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.