The wiki page on chocolate is not so sure about that one:
Despite a popular belief that chocolate derives from the Nahuatl word chocolatl, early texts documenting the Nahuatl word for chocolate drink use a different term, cacahuatl, meaning “cacao water”. Several alternatives have therefore been proposed. In one, chocolate is derived from the hypothetical Nahuatl word xocoatl, meaning “bitter drink”. Scholars Michael and Sophie Coe consider this unlikely, saying that there is no clear reason why the ‘sh’ sound represented by ‘x’ would change to ‘ch’, or why an ‘l’ would be added.[4] Another theory suggests that chocolate comes from chocolatl, meaning ‘hot water’ in a Mayan language. However, there is no evidence of the form ‘chocol’ being used to mean hot.[4] Despite the uncertainty about its Nahuatl origin, there is some agreement that chocolate likely derives from the Nawat word chikola:tl.[5]
Yeah I’d heard that there’s a chance the spanish felt they needed a new word for it because the ‘caca’ is not an appealing sound for a drink in many indo-european languages.
The wiki page on chocolate is not so sure about that one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate#Etymology
Yeah I’d heard that there’s a chance the spanish felt they needed a new word for it because the ‘caca’ is not an appealing sound for a drink in many indo-european languages.