The Quechua word for chicken may come from the last Inca emperor's name
Early Quechua dictionaries list atawallpa and wallpa as words for chicken, and for centuries historians assumed Atahualpa was named after the bird, even translating his name as happy rooster. But chickens were newcomers to the Andes. Modern scholars think the Spanish-introduced birds were named after the emperor instead, as one sixteenth-century writer already claimed.
Atahualpa was born around 1502, a son of the emperor Huayna Cápac. Where he was born is disputed: most Peruvian historians, following the chroniclers who questioned Inca nobles directly, place it in Cusco with an Inca princess as his mother, while some Ecuadorian historians favour Quito or Caranqui. At thirteen he went north with his father to put down revolts and stayed more than a decade, learning to govern and earning a reputation for courage alongside the generals Chalcuchímac and Quizquiz.
Huayna Cápac died in the 1520s during a smallpox epidemic that also killed his chosen successor. Another son, Huáscar, took the throne and made Atahualpa governor of Quito. Their uneasy truce collapsed into civil war from 1529. One chronicler says Huáscar's troops captured Atahualpa, who escaped having lost an ear and afterwards wore a headdress tied under his chin to hide it, though another writer doubted the tale. Atahualpa's generals won battle after battle. When an oracle predicted his advance would end badly, he killed its priest and had the shrine torn down.
Around the time of his victory, Francisco Pizarro's small band of Spaniards arrived. In November 1532 they ambushed and seized Atahualpa at Cajamarca. He paid a vast ransom in return for a promise of freedom and, from captivity, arranged for the captured Huáscar to be killed. The Spaniards took the ransom, then tried him for treason and Huáscar's murder and condemned him to be burned. Because he accepted baptism in July 1533, he was garrotted instead. Later claimants to the Inca title never held comparable power.
Source: Atahualpa
