Quingnam

Quingnam, also called Chimú or the fisherman's language, was the language of Chimor, a kingdom that arose on the coast of northern Peru around 900 with its adobe capital at Chan Chan. Chimú conquests made Quingnam the official tongue along the coastal valleys, used alongside Mochica in the north and coastal Quechua in the south; reduplicating place names mark the region.

The Incas under Topa Inca Yupanqui absorbed Chimor around 1470, but the language survived into Spanish times. Friars wrote grammars that were lost, leaving little beyond a numeral list, proper names and scattered words; chroniclers complained of Quingnam's obscure, slippery pronunciation.

Epidemics, forced labour and the pull of the Spanish city of Trujillo beside Chan Chan broke the language's transmission, and Quingnam was extinct by 1763. Some scholars group it with Mochica and other tongues in a wider Chimuan family.