Etymology of Peru

The etymology of the place name Peru is variable and subject to some historical interpretations.

Origin of the term

It is known that, at least since 1523, ten years before the Spanish conquest, the name Peru was already fixed, as evidenced by documents referring to the payment of tributes for the gold obtained in the expedition of Pascual de Andagoya "who went to the province of Peru, and Juan García de Montenegro, who went for Veedor (...) certain gold that they said had been found on the said trip to Peru" . Before establishing the definitive form of the name, it had had variants such as Virú, Birú, Berú or Pirú, with the which is found in various documents of the time. In that area, languages of the Chocoana family are currently spoken.

It is widely accepted that Andagoya never reached the aforementioned historical region of Peru, but at most the coast of present-day Colombian Chocó, not further south of the San Juan River. From that "Peru" The Spanish captain Gaspar de Morales had already received news beforehand: "in the eastern part of the Gulf of San Miguel there was a great chieftain named Birú, who had great wealth of gold and pearls". It is doubtful that Morales could have reached the lands of that cacique. It was this little Lord of Birú, who had a few tributary caciques, whom Andagoya conquered and whose ruler he finally befriended, receiving news of the existence of an opulent kingdom far to the south. By then all undiscovered land south of the Gulf of San Miguel already received the name of Birú or Peru. Finally, when Francisco Pizarro embarked to the south to conquer an unknown Amerindian kingdom, the Inca Empire, the region to which he was heading was already called Peru. In this way, a small manor in the Colombian jungle ended up giving its name to one of the greatest dreams of wealth of the Spanish Empire.

In the Royal Commentaries of the Incas, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega writes:

"The Spaniards, having caressed him because he lost the fear of seeing them with beards and in a different suit that his own had collected, asked him for signs and for words which land was that and what was his name. The Indian, by the ademans and menians who with hands and faces did to him (as a mute) understood that they asked him, but did not understand what they asked him, and to what he understood was he answered priesa (before they did some evil) and named his own name, saying Berú, and added another and said Pelú. I meant, “If you ask me what my name is, I say Berú and if you ask me where I was, I say I was in the river.” Because it is to be known that the name “Pelu” in the language of that province is an appealing name and means river in common, as we will see in a serious author (...).(...) They edited both names, as the Spaniards corrupt almost all the vocablos that take from the language of the Indians of that land, because if they took the name of the Indian, Berú, they stumbled the b by the p, and if the name Pelú, which means river, they trodden the l by the r, and in the one way or the other they said the name Peru. "

Initial territory according to Spain

It seems, however, safe to affirm that the Spanish already gave this name to an unexplored region with indefinite limits to the south of Panama before Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire for Spain starting in 1532.

Extent of the Inca Empire

Map of Peru. Photographer: Eman Bowen. Ca. 1750.

Since then, the name Peru has historically been associated with a clearly defined South American region: the ancient Inca Empire encompassed areas that today belong to several countries in this region.

Subsidiarily, and despite the historical vicissitudes that made its limits very variable, it gave its name to the colonial demarcation of the Viceroyalty of Peru, built on the former Governorate of Nueva Castilla and Governorate of Nuevo Toledo.

Finally, the process of political independence of the viceroyalty from its metropolis gave rise to several republics in South America, including the Republic of Peru.

In the time of the chronicler Pedro Cieza de León, in the mid-16th century, the territories that made up the historical region of Peru were already defined.

I do not want to deal now with what the kings Ingas ruled, which were more than a thousand two hundred leagues, but I will only say what is meant by Peru, which is from Quito to the villa of Plata, from one term to the other.

Pedro Cieza de León (1553). The Chronicle of Peru, Chapter XXVI / In which the description and trace of Peru is tendered...