How do you spell Cusco or Cuzco?

A very common and recurring question that arises when people visit Cusco, what is the correct way to write the name of the ancient Inca capital. This hesitation is due to the dichotomy caused by modern standardization by the city municipality.

The municipality of the imperial capital, backed by the Cusco Quechua Academy, started a campaign promoting the use of "Cusco" instead of "Cuzco." Some media outlets also supported this formal substitution of the name for "Qosqo".

But let's look at the true nature of this conflict. As it is easy to notice, the notation "Cusco" seems to have been a total success among those who do not know the story behind the name. This has surprised due to the superstitious posture of many Cusco residents. What was the reason for this change? It so happens that someone detected that "cuzco" meant 'small dog or mestizo' according to the RAE, so they considered this as "offensive" to the residents of Cusco.

As reparation, the least that was done was to start a campaign in favor of the "Cusco" form to move away from these supposedly "dangerous" associations. However, the same dictionary also records "cusca" as an alternative form with the same meaning.

Beyond all this, the reaction of the anonymous amender is naïve, not to say absurd: the word Cuzco for all Peruvians and foreigners, without a doubt, refers only to the imperial city, free of any association with the meaning of 'dog', since this meaning, of uncertain local use, is not common in the scope of the Hispanic world in general.

The use of the term "Qosqo" is seen as a major mistake due to a misguided campaign. The correct pronunciation in Quechua is [qosqo], not in Spanish. The Quechua language only uses three vowels (a,i,u), with variations such as [e] and [o] appearing due to certain consonants. Phonologically and orthographically, according to the official Quechua alphabet, the term should be written as "Qusqu", pronounced [qosqo].

Most bilingual Quechua speakers in Cusco call the city [qosqo] in Quechua and [kusko] in Spanish. Other Quechua speakers use [kusku], not [qosqo].

The term "Cuzco" with 'z' and 'u' originated in the early years of the conquest and was initially used by Inca Garcilaso himself. Colonial experts in Quechua used it because the 'z' represented a different phoneme from /s/, which disappeared from Cusco Quechua in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

The use of 'z' was not arbitrary, but sought to faithfully represent the Quechua pronunciation of the time. This spelling persisted at least until the end of the seventeenth century in the Cusco dialect itself. The form "Cuzco" is considered the most genuine version to rescue the true etymology of the word.