chica

In the distant-future Earth of Isaac Asimov's novel Pebble In The Sky, the city of Chicago is named Chica. This is clearly a clipping of the city name in future linguistic evolution, not a transforming of it into a Spanish girl.

The recent novel Foundation's Triumph by David Brin, which extends the universe of the Asimov novels, mentions the Earth of this novel's even more distant future as having three distinct sets of ruins of ancient Chicago -- one with tall downtown buildings, suburban sprawl, and surface-level expressways (20th-21st centuries), one that's fully enclosed (Caves Of Steel era), and the later and smaller "Chica" from the radioactive Earth of the Pebble In The Sky era. This seems to imply that the builders in each of these eras refrained from clearing away the ruins of earlier eras when building their new cities, though no mention of this is made in the earlier novels.

Chi"ca (?), n. [Sp.]

A red coloring matter. extracted from the Bignonia Chica, used by some tribes of South American Indians to stain the skin.

2.

A fermented liquor or beer made in South American from a decoction of maize.

3.

A popular Moorish, Spanish, and South American dance, said to be the original of the fandango, etc.

© Webster 1913.