1.
Introduction
A brief historical contextualization of the Cañaris and their language
The Cañari people were mainly located in the territories that nowadays are the provinces of Azuay and Cañar (Reinoso, 2017) in the Southern Andes of Ecuador, and based on toponymic research, there is also evidence of their presence in areas of the current provinces of Guayas, El Oro, Chimborazo, Loja, Zamora Chinchipe, and Morona Santiago (Encalada Vásquez, 2021). Regarding their language, the Cañari people referred to their native tongue as Cañar (Cordero & Encalada, 2021; Montaluisa Chasiquiza, 2019), an indigenous language that has died in its spoken form, but survives in the toponyms, phytonyms, and anthroponyms of the Southern Andes of the country.
Before the arrival of the Incas, what today is the city of Cuenca was known as Guapdondélic, Cañari expression that can be translated as “plain as big as the sky” (Encalada Vásquez, 2021). In the 15th century, the Inca domination of the Chinchaysuyu started, and with it, its cultural and linguistic expansion through the territories that integrated the Inca state known as Tahuantinsuyu (Espinoza & Achig, 1989). At the time the Inca Huayna Capac ruled, he ceded the lands of Quito, today, Ecuador, to his son Atahualpa, while leaving Huascar to inherit the city of Cuzco, with the intention of having the two brothers rule separately but supportively (Bauer, 2015). The Cañari people respected Huayna Capac as he was born in Tumipampa, the name the Incas gave to the Cañari Guapdondélic. After Huayna Capac’s death, his sons Atahualpa and Huascar started a civil war and fought over succession to the throne of the Inca Empire. The Cañaris were the first to deny Atahualpa as their monarch, and they allied with Huascar in an attempt to recover their freedom and territory; however, they were dominated by the Incas and had to suffer the consequences of their defeat (Iglesias, 1987). As a result of the Inca conquest, Quechua was imposed as the dominant language of the region, gradually risking the existence and maintenance of the Cañari language. However, due to the dynamic nature of languages, Quechua, whose Ecuadorian dialect is known as Kichwa today, was inadvertently nourished by Cañari linguistic elements. As explained by González Suárez (1878), the language of the conquerors was mainly enriched by incorporating Cañari voices into the Quechua lexicon (Encalada Vásquez, 2021), a linguistic phenomenon that can be found today in hybrid family names and toponyms.
In Tumipampa, the second imperial center after Cuzco (Bray & Echeverría, 2018), Quechua and Cañari experienced language hybridity and expressions such as Cañaribamba (The Cañari plain) or Hatun Cañar (The Great Cañar) containing roots from both linguistic repertoires, were commonly introduced as toponyms (Encalada Vázquez, 2021). The dynamic interaction of Cañari and Quechua resulted in language borrowing—the incorporation of lexical elements from one language into another (Mesthrie et al., 2009), as a result of the coexistence of both languages and cultures for a period of fifty years until the Inca domination came to an end and later during a period of twenty-five years after the Spanish foundation of Cuenca (Cordero Palacios, 1981). Today, the Cañari language is extinct, and we do not have any written documents to analyze its morphosyntax. What is known about the language is based on the study of the phytonyms, toponyms, and anthroponyms still present in the region (Cordero Palacios, 1981; Encalada Vásquez, 2021). Consequently, our Cañari heritage can only be unveiled through linguistic and historical analysis. In this case, an analysis of a significant number of family names is conducted through the triangulation of document sources.
Language contact, morphological borrowing, and language loss
The term language contact can be defined as a sociolinguistic phenomenon typically involving “individual users, or a whole speech community, acquainted with at least two languages” (Gardani, 2022, p. 846), which commonly recognizes one of them as the dominant language. In this sense, language contact can be associated with language shift and language loss, as the dominance of one language inevitably puts the other at risk. Throughout the centuries, the disappearance of languages has been associated with political, geographical, and sociocultural aspects. These aspects foreground the fact that one language can highly influence another by first changing its lexicon and morphosyntax and gradually replacing them. Lee (2020) references four factor scales on language endangerment: intergenerational transmission, number of speakers, speaker number trends, and domains of language use. These factors are essential to either maintain or lose a language, most commonly an indigenous language. It is worth mentioning that political factors are closely related to Lee’s factor scales, as dominant languages are commonly vested with political authority, as in the case of the Spanish language in the 15th century, which, due to political power, gradually led to the extinction of the Cañari language. At this point, we can say that any language at risk of disappearing—for instance, the Cañari language during the Spanish colonization—can experience great difficulty for intergenerational transmission, which inevitably decreases the number of speakers and their domains of language use.
In light of the above description, when minoritized languages (Haboud, 2004) manage to survive, they inevitably experience processes of lexical and morphological borrowing. In this study, there is evidence that language contact between Kichwa and Cañari during the 15th century led to both lexical and morphological adaptations. Hence, the historical contextualization of the names discussed in this article provides not only knowledge about the Cañari anthroponyms still existing in the city of Cuenca but also understanding of the dynamics of language contact and morphological borrowing. According to Gardani (2022), language borrowing is typically associated with a loanword, and it can be of two types: direct or indirect (Sergiivna et al., 2020). Direct borrowing concerns the incorporation of a source language (SL) native word into a recipient language (RL), while indirect borrowing implies the incorporation of a word that the SL has already borrowed from another language. An example of direct borrowing is the French word omelette which incorporated into the English language in the 1600s. On the other hand, feast can be regarded as an indirect borrowing from French into English, as we can trace it back to the Latin form festum. Other forms of borrowing embrace grammatical transfer that involves all grammatical levels as well as phonetic, phonological, prosodic, morphological, and morphosyntactic subcategories. One key characteristic of language borrowing has to do with the acceptance or modification of the lexical category adopted, i.e., the lexical item being borrowed may keep its original features, or it can be modified to suit the characteristics of the language to which it is incorporated. To better understand this idea, Gardani explains that lexical borrowing implies a relationship between the RL and the SL, sometimes allowing the RL to either break its phonological or morphosyntactic patterns to accept the new word or adapt the new lexical acquisition from the SL to the phonological or morphosyntactic rules of the RL. In other cases, such lexical incorporation implies the loss of a phonological or morphosyntactic feature. An example of this type of loss can be found in Ch’ol language borrowings. Typically, Mayan languages do not admit word-initial consonantal clusters, and thus when lexical borrowing from the Spanish language occurs, phonological accommodation is necessary, i.e., deleting, adding, or recombining sounds. The incorporation of the Spanish word cruz is a clear example of phonological accommodation in the RL, as in the Mayan Ch’ol, it has become rus by deleting one consonant in the Spanish cluster. A similar pattern is found in Media Lengua, a mixed language composed of Quichua and Spanish, which exhibits a phonological system that highly reflects that of the Quichua language in its acoustic form (Onosson & Stewart, 2024). Borrowing sounds from Spanish has resulted in the successful incorporation of vowel sequences unfamiliar to the Quichua language. Onosson and Stewart have pointed out that this practice has successfully combined the Quichua vowels /i, u, a/ and the Spanish vowels /a, e, i, o, u/, so that the media lengua vowel system can successfully integrate Spanish vowel sequences into Quichua phonology to adapt bilinguals’ vowel production while maintaining, at the same time, phonological contrasts which are not stated in Quichua.
Morphological borrowing, on the other hand, can be defined as the incorporation of inflectional and derivational morphemes into an RL. Gardani has pointed out that derivational affixes are more frequently borrowed than inflectional affixes, as in the case of the French derivational suffix -able, which was transferred to the English language by dropping its initial letter /h/. Nowadays, this derivational suffix meaning “capable” commonly derives English adjectives from verbs (e.g., breakable, understandable, or readable). Fisher et al. (2022) have also studied allomorphy in Pennsylvania Dutch (PD), to illustrate the different phonological representations of a single morphosyntactic feature, and the complexity of borrowing inflectional morphemes— those predominantly associated with subject-verb agreement and plural formation. According to Fisher et al., when morphological borrowing occurs in bilingual settings, speakers highly consider prosody as a key factor for determining if the morphological borrowing can be allowed or not, underscoring the complexity of inflectional-morpheme borrowing and consequently the complexity of the bilingual mind. A clear illustration of this linguistic phenomenon is evidenced in the distribution of nominal plurals in Dutch and Standard German, which predominantly generate word-final trochees (a combination of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable). Additionally, in PD-English bilinguals, Fisher et al. have found that inflectional morphology is highly difficult to borrow in language contact scenarios, perhaps mainly due to the fact that plurality, for example, depends on different root-types and lexical trees that have been internalized in the bilingual mind, with the exception of certain borrowings from the English language.
Therefore, for the purpose of this study, i.e., the identification of Cañari family names in Cuenca, the linguistic examination of the anthroponyms was based on the Cañari affixes that have already been identified through an exhaustive process of morphological comparison and segmentation according to validated document sources (Encalada Vásquez, 2021). Nonetheless, a morphological approach to Cañari family names cannot be detached from historical contextualization, and thus recognizing these surnames as Cañari also requires placing them in historical and toponymical settings. Hence, this work expands the existing literature about the topic by 1) recognizing morphological borrowing as one of the key features of the Kichwa-Cañari surnames identified in the region; 2) morphologically categorizing Cañari and Kichwa-Cañari surnames found in the city of Cuenca; and 3) providing Kichwa-Cañari surnames to illustrate language contact and morphological borrowing as determining factors leading to language shift and sometimes language loss.
2.
Methodology
Data collection procedure
Data was collected from the 2019-to-2023 telephone directories of the city of Cuenca, from which 318 indigenous family names were identified. All surnames were alphabetically organized for morphological, historical, and toponymical contextualization, considering validated document sources for triangulation.
Figure 1
Document sources for triangulation
Data analysis procedure
The analysis procedure involved the triangulation of at least two sources of information (Heale & Forbes, 2013) to have a surname classified as Cañari, and thus to enhance the credibility and validity of the findings (Bans-Akutey & Tiimub, 2021). The following inclusion criteria were considered for categorization: 1) surnames having Cañari roots or affixes; 2) surnames that are also toponyms in the provinces of Azuay and Cañar, former Cañari territory; and 3) surnames reported as Cañari in historical bibliography. A total of 262 family names were excluded from data analysis due to two main reasons: 1) they were identified as indigenous surnames having roots or affixes other than Cañari morphemes, or 2) they did not align with any of the inclusion criteria considered for this study.
Encalada Vásquez’s (2021) morphological comparison and segmentation provided a robust source of information about Cañari affixes, which, when contrasted with historical references, allowed a more reliable source of information. To illustrate the analysis and triangulation procedure conducted in this study, consider the Cañari suffix -cela as an example. Document analysis showed that there is agreement on the fact that the Cañari suffix -cela has the meaning of “belonging to a group or descendant of a group”. Some examples of Cañari surnames in Cuenca having this suffix are Cayamcela, Dumancela, Macancela, Saquicela, and Tenecela. Then, the historical setting of family names was also a source of information for determining whether a surname could be categorized as Cañari or not. For instance, the historical archives that Cárdenas (2004) has examined report that the Cañari ethnicity was organized in cacicazgos, i.e., groups of families under the government of an indigenous leader known as cacique. Then, these historical records pointed out Cañari names such as Joan Tenecela and Diego Saquicela as caciques in Gualaceo (1592) and Chordeleg (1683), respectively. Consequently, the analysis of morphological and historical combinations has allowed the researcher to provide a description of the current Cañari family names in the city of Cuenca, as well as a recognition of Kichwa-Cañari combinations falling into morphological borrowing.
3.
Results
The following categorization is the result of morphological analysis and historical and toponymical contextualization through document source triangulation. A total of eleven Cañari morphemes were identified within fifty-six family names in Cuenca. These morphemes have been classified as Cañari roots, prefixes, or suffixes, which, in some cases, appear in Cañari or Kichwa-Cañari combinations. These linguistic amalgamations have allowed the researcher to identify morphological borrowing by analyzing the meaning of the linguistic elements present in such combinations.
Cañari family names ending in the Cañari suffix -al or -ar
The Cañari suffix -al or -ar whose meaning is unknown (Encalada Vásquez, 2021) appears in two family names in Cuenca: Asmal and Cañar; this suffix is also present in Cañari toponyms such as Aymal, Gañal, Guvar, Palpal, Tahual and Tepal in the province of Azuay and toponyms such as Puchar, Sharar and Shuclloyubar in the province of Cañar. From a historical perspective, both family names are registered as Cañari caciques. According to Cárdenas (2004), Francisco Hasmal was a Cañari cacique in 1582 in what today is Guachapala, a territorial division in the province of Azuay. Regarding the family name Cañar, Encalada Vásquez (2021) points out that, in the austral region of what is today Ecuador, centuries before the Incan invasion, there was an ethnic group that identified itself as Cañari and whose language was known as Cañar (Cordero, 1981). In addition, the Spanish chronicler Cieza de León (1518-1554), in his Chronicle of Peru, describes that, leaving the city of Tomebamba (former Cañari Guapdondélic), the great road to Cuzco ran through the province of the Cañaris and reached Cañaribamba and Hatuncañari, two main administrative centers of the region (Cieza de León, 2005). Table 1 therefore, shows the Cañari surnames ending in the suffix -al or -ar and the sources of information compared.
Table 1
Cañari family names in Cuenca ending in the Cañari suffix -al or -ar
Cañari family names ending in the Cañari suffix -an
Cárdenas (2004) pointed out that the Cañar suffix -an can be found in the Cañari surnames Burguán, Casiguán, Chalaguán, and Yatán, which are almost extinct in the territory, as well as in the Cañari toponyms Amañan, Buerán, and Awelán in the province of Cañar. This suffix, whose meaning is unknown (Encalada Vásquez, 2021), was found in two family names in Cuenca: Faicán and Jadán (Table 2). In the case of Faicán, it has been reported as a Cañari family name (Cordero Palacios, 1981), including a historical reference stating that Ricardo Faicán was a Cañari cacique in 1751 (Cárdenas, 2004). Regarding Jadán, this surname is also a toponym in Azuay (Cordero Palacios, 1981).
Table 2
Cañari family names in Cuenca ending in the Cañari suffix -an
Cañari family names ending in the Cañari suffix -ay
The Cañari suffix -ay, whose meaning is unknown (Encalada Vásquez, 2021), appears in seven family names in Cuenca. The suffix can also be traced in different toponyms in the provinces of Azuay and Cañar, former Cañari settlements. Some of these toponyms are Taday, Biblincay, Monay (Cárdenas, 2004), and Dubllay (Cordero, 1981). In the case of Dubllay, today, the toponym appears as Dubliay in two locations in Azuay and Cañar. Therefore, the seven surnames identified in Cuenca can be regarded as Cañari, considering their suffixation and historical contextualization as family names or toponyms existing in former Cañari settlements (Table 3).
Table 3
Cañari family names in Cuenca ending in the Cañari suffix -ay
Cañari family names ending in the Cañari suffix -cay
The Cañari suffix -cay, whose meaning is “water” (Encalada Vásquez, 2021), was found in five family names in Cuenca. One family name has been registered as a Cañari surname (Cordero Palacios, 1981; Encalada Vásquez, 2021), while four surnames can also be classified as toponyms in the provinces of Azuay and Cañar (Encalada Vásquez, 2021), where it is common to find various toponyms ending in the suffix -cay, sometimes showing an explicit relation between the name and its characteristics. Yanuncay, a river in Cuenca, is a clear example of such a relation, as its hybrid name literally means “dark water” from the Kichwa free root yana meaning “dark” and the Cañari suffix -cay meaning “water”. If indeed the Kichwa root yana is the base in this combination, the Cañari suffix -cay becomes an example of a morphological borrowing affecting the phonology of the Kichwa base, i.e., yana has been phonologically transformed to accept the suffix -cay by changing the final vowel and adding the consonant sound /n/. However, if the Kichwa root in Yanuncay is yanuna, which means “to cook”, then the phonological adaptation implies the dropping of the final vowel sound to maintain the consonant /n/ sound before the suffix -cay. We can therefore hypothesize that this phonological adaptation responds to the ease of articulation, which means that Kichwa speakers in the 15th century simplified pronunciation. In this particular case, the phonemes /n/ and /k/ are nearby sounds, and they apparently appear together to facilitate pronunciation. A similar phonological adaptation has been found in Kichwa-Cañari compounds having the suffix -cela. Table 4 lists the Cañari family names in Cuenca ending in the suffix -cay.
Table 4
Cañari family names in Cuenca ending in the Cañari suffix -cay
Cañari family names ending in the suffix -cela
The Cañari suffix -cela, whose meaning is “belonging to a group or descendant of a group”, was found in thirteen family names in Cuenca. Most of these surnames are a combination of Kichwa and Cañari. For example, the surname Cochancela, which includes the Kichwa free root kucha “lake” and the Cañari suffix -cela, can be interpreted as “belonging to the group of people from the lake” (Encalada Vásquez, 2021). This hybridity can be regarded as the result of the linguistic and cultural encounter between the Incas and the ethnic groups that already inhabited the Sierra region of the Chinchaysuyu, the northern territory of the Inca Empire that extended from Cuzco in Peru to Quito in Ecuador (Portocarrero & Borba, 2015). An important assumption based on this linguistic encounter is that the Cañari suffix -cela can be classified as a derivational morpheme borrowed by Kichwa speakers in the 15th century. This interpretation is made considering Gardani’s (2022) assertion that derivational morphology is more commonly borrowed. Indeed, the suffix -cela, as shown in table 5, exhibits a derivational nature as the suffix is attached to nouns and verbs, similar to other languages’ derivational processes.
Consequently, the family names in Table 5 containing the Cañari suffix -cela preceded by either a Kichwa or a Cañari root underscore language contact and borrowing as a typical linguistic behavior in the Andes at that time. The derivational Cañari suffix -cela appears preceded by Kichwa nouns such as kucha, waman, and pilla and by Kichwa verbs such as cayana, makana and sakina, showing that indeed the Cañari linguistic elements adopted by Kichwa enriched its lexicon and allowed the creation of new derivations. As previously discussed, language borrowing also refers to the acceptance or modification of the adopted lexical category, including phonological accommodations. In the set of data analyzed in this work, we can only hypothesize about phonological accommodations, since the combinations Cayamcela, Macancela, and Guamancela exhibit what may be the incorporation of the consonant /n/ sound after the vowel sound /a/, probably to facilitate pronunciation. However, data are not sufficient to support this statement, and further research must be conducted.
Finally, regarding Cañari-Cañari combinations, the family name Dumancela, combining the free root Dumma and the suffix -cela, deserves to be highlighted as Dumma refers to the name of a famous Cañari cacique who resisted the invasion of Inca Tupac Yupanqui in 1460 with the support of other caciques (Cárdenas, 2004). Then, the family name Dumancela can be interpreted as “belonging to the family of or descendant of the Cacique Dumma”. Figures 2 and 3 show the archeological vestiges of the Castle of the Cacique Dumma in Sigsig, a predominant Cañari settlement in Azuay, Ecuador.
Table 5
Kichwa-Cañari and Cañari-Cañari family names in Cuenca ending in the suffix -cela
Note. Adapted from Encalada Vásquez, O. (2021). Los Cañaris y su lengua, Cuenca: Editorial Don Bosco.
Figure 2
Archeological vestiges of the Castle of the Cañari Cacique Dumma in the Archeological Complex of Chobshi in Sigsig, Azuay
Photograph: Hernán Jaramillo-Ochoa
Figure 3
A Stone Wall of the Castle of the Cañari Cacique Dumma in the Archeological Complex of Chobshi in Sigsig, Azuay
Photograph: Sandra Cabrera-Moreno
Cañari family names having the Cañari morpheme déleg as a free root
The Cañari morpheme déleg or dilig, meaning “large plain”, can be traced as a root or a suffix in various toponyms in the provinces of Azuay and Cañar. For example, Deleg, Bedeleg, Chordeleg, Gordéleg, and Gualadéleg in Azuay and Gundilig, Pindilig, and Shindilig in Cañar. Regarding family names in Cuenca, there is only one surname having déleg as a free root, as seen in Table 6.
Table 6
Cañari family names having the morpheme déleg
Cañari family names ending in the Cañari suffix -i
The Cañari suffix -i, whose meaning is unknown (Encalada Vásquez, 2021) appears in different Cañari toponyms such as Auñari, Caulli, Julli, Llimbi, and Shari in the province of Azuay. In Cuenca, this suffix was found in five family names that Cordero Palacios (1981) has reported as Cañari: Atancuri, Chasi, Duchi, Uyaguari, and Supliguchi (Table 7). Regarding Atancuri, Cárdenas (2004) notes that in 1600, Pedro Atancuri was a Cañari cacique in Cojitambo, province of Cañar. Concerning the surname Uyaguari, Cárdenas stated that, in 1783, Feliciano Iyaguari was the governor of a small indigenous parish in Arogsapa in the province of Azuay.
Table 7
Cañari family names in Cuenca ending in the suffix -i
Cañari family names having the morpheme naula
The Cañari morpheme naula, whose meaning is unknown, can serve either as a free root or a suffix, as evidenced in anthroponymic combinations such as Naulacela, Naulahuari, Guapinaula, or Dumanaula (Encalada Vásquez, 2021). In Cuenca, it was found as a free root in one family name and as a suffix in three family names. For example, Dumanaula is the union of the free root Dumma (Cárdenas, 2004; Cordero Palacios, 1981) and the suffix -naula. Concerning the surname Saquinaula, it can be inferred that it is a hybrid family name that combines the Kichwa root sakina “to abandon” and the Cañar suffix -naula. Table 8 illustrates the use of this morpheme either as a free root or a suffix in Cañari family names.
Table 8
Cañari family names in Cuenca having the morpheme naula as a free root or suffix
Other Cañari morphemes in Cañari family names in Cuenca
The following Cañari family names have less common Cañari morphemes: the prefix gua- or wa-, the suffix -shun, and the root xima. Table 9 includes a morphological description of each term and its toponymical or historical contextualization.
Table 9
Other Cañari roots and affixes in family names in Cuenca
Other family names identified as Cañari
The following Cañari family names show no clear affixation (Table 10); however, we can regard them as Cañari free roots or a combination of undetermined Cañari morphemes, considering two main sources of information: 1) Cordero Palacios’ (1981) lexicon of Kichwa and Cañari, in which the author separates one language from the other, making an explicit distinction between Kichwa and Cañari surnames and toponyms; and 2) Cárdenas’ (2004) inventory of Cañari caciques in the provinces of Azuay and Cañar between the years 1460 and 1820.
Table 10
Other family names in Cuenca classified as Cañari
Table 11
Summary of Cañari roots and affixes found in Cañari surnames and Kichwa-Cañari combinations in Cuenca
4.
Conclusions
From the 318 indigenous family names identified in Cuenca, Ecuador, fifty-six surnames have been classified as having Cañari elements, relying on morphological analysis and historical and toponymical contextualization through document triangulation. The morphological markers discussed in this study are reminders of the Cañari heritage still alive in the anthroponyms of the city of Cuenca, a former Cañari settlement in what today is Ecuador. These markers are also reminders of language contact and language borrowing through the centuries. In this context, special attention has been placed on the suffix -cela as it can be regarded as an example of a morphological borrowing that has maintained its derivational function in Kichwa-Cañari combinations, similar to what has occurred to the French suffix -able that was incorporated into the English language without losing its original meaning. As previously stated, language borrowing goes beyond lexical or morphosyntactic adaptations and includes phonological accommodations. The data analyzed in this study suggests that there might be a phonological accommodation in some Kichwa-Cañari surnames, since, as observed in these combinations, there is an insertion of the consonant sound /n/ or its allomorph /m/ following the Kichwa root. Some of these examples are Cayamcela, Dumancela, Cochancela, and Macancela.
In general, Cañari prefixes, suffixes, and free roots appear in two forms: Cañari words and Kichwa-Cañari morphological combinations, showing the linguistic implications of language contact between the Incas and the Cañari people in the Southern Andes of Ecuador during the 15th century. It is therefore undeniable that languages in contact in diglossic settings undergo processes of lexical, morphological, and morphosyntactic influence that can be either beneficial or detrimental. In the case of the Cañari language, its contact with the Spanish language caused its extinction; however, the survival of Kichwa in the Andes has allowed us, due to language contact and morphological borrowing, to know something about the extinct Cañari language. We have seen, especially in Kichwa-Cañari combinations, part of its morphological system in which suffixation predominates. As no written record of the Cañari language exists, the anthroponyms and toponyms analyzed in this study play an essential role in the reconstruction of morphological and phonological borrowing scenarios, allowing us to make inferences about the linguistic adaptations or modifications that morphological borrowing and, specifically, derivational borrowings from the Cañari language caused to the Kichwa language.
In addition, to language borrowing, the historical context provided in this study may serve as a basis for the examination of the role of diglossia in the gradual extinction of indigenous languages, especially linguistic families in Latin America. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that, through the centuries, language borrowing has been intrinsically related to political factors, and thus as Lee (2020) has stated, dominant languages are vested with political authority. Following that thought, it is also worth distinguishing that political factors are closely related to what Lee (2020) has defined as factor scales that can be either beneficial or detrimental to minoritized languages. Therefore, dominant languages are politically and geographically controlling, as was the case of Spanish in the 15th century, a language that, due to such power and influence in the region, gradually led to the extinction of the Cañari language. At this point, we can finally say that the Cañari anthroponyms and toponyms that have survived are a cultural heritage to be treasured; they are reminders of the complexity of language contact and borrowing as well as reminders of how a language can disappear from a speech community.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Research Group “Lenguaje, Culturas y Representaciones” and Vicerrectorado de Investigación, Universidad de Cuenca.
Disclosure statement
No competing interests to declare.
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Sandra Leonor Cabrera Moreno, 
