Chipipe is not Shit Pipe
Did Chipipe beach really get its name from an English «shit pipe»? A 1924 dictionary debunks the viral rumor that even fooled Wikipedia.
A few days ago I heard a badly made rumor. Someone came up with the "theory" that the etymology of Chipipe (popular area of the Salinas spa, Ecuador) was related to the word Shit (shit in English).
Well, it is not common for the names of our cities, towns or places to come from English and on top of that they have a pejorative connotation, so I decided to investigate a little. The serious thing about the rumor was that it had leaked until it was quoted on Wikipedia.
The rumor, as can be seen in the previous image, said that the US troops who arrived in Salinas for the Second World War had installed a sewer pipe that they called "shit pipe" and that is where the name of the beach came from.
Well, I'm not going to go into the details of how the mystery was solved, but after so much "dusting trunks" I found the proof I was looking for. An old book, printed in 1924, called "SEMANTICS. Ecuadorian Lexicography Essay", It turned out to be the" missing link "in this case of etymologicide 😉
In the book it is a sort of dictionary of colloquial terms. At the bottom of its page 13 appears the revealing term… CHIPIPE!
I transcribe what it says ... "CHIPIPE.-s. Name of a village in Salinas, population of Ecuador.“
This completely disproves the hypothesis that Chipipe is so named due to the pipeline of the gringos in the Second World War, since that happened in the 1940s, several years after the publication of the book in question.
To the peace of mind of the peninsular reader, after this discovery (which I published in a timely manner on twitter) the misguided mention of Wikipedia was withdrawn. Happy everyone, especially the people of Salinas!
References: Original tweet https://twitter.com/elandivar/status/971396918294335488
But the story does not end here. After several months of publishing the first version of this article, a good peninsular friend sent me an old Spanish map from the 18th century, where the name of Chipipe can be clearly seen at the point where the Salinas Yacht Club is currently located.
The tests kept coming. I am currently investigating information from a path, where the name of CHEPITE is mentioned, referring to the same place. Apparently a term from the native language of the sector.
Enjoy the stories behind words? Continue with the buccaneers and barbecued meat and the name of Isla de la Plata, or browse the whole etymology series.
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