chichimeca (false etymology/mnemonic/rude joke)

[Susan Gilchrist]

Dear listeros,
I'm looking at what seem to be three examples of the same thing, where
breaking a long word into some short words seems to result in a mnemonic for
learning new words, but it can turn into a "false etymology" and/or an
insult:

Chichimeca = dog (chichi) + rope (mecatl)
Dominicanes = God (Domini) + dogs (canes)
Manhattan = man + hat + tan

I found a long explanation online for "domini canes," which eventually
became the basis for the escudo of the Dominicans, but had nothing to do
with their being called Dominicans in the first place (from: "St. Dominic
and His Work, by Pierre Mandonnet, O.P., Translated by Sister Mary Benedicta
Larkin, O.P., B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis/London, 1948. Domini Canes by
Pierre Mandonnet, O.P.," online at
http://www.op.org/Domcentral/trad/domwork/domworka6.htm)
As far as I know there's no explanation for "man + hat + tan" unless it's
that it's an easy spelling to read in English and Dutch (maybe as man + hatt
+ an).
I've found sort of an explanation of chichi + mecatl but am not sure what to
think of it;

> "As the Spaniards and their Amerindian allies from the south made their
> way into Nueva Galicia early in the Sixteenth Century, they encountered
> large numbers of nomadic Chichimeca Indians. Philip Wayne Powell - whose
> Soldiers, Indians, and Silver: North America's First Frontier War is the
> definitive source of information relating to the Chichimeca Indians -
> referred to Chichimeca as "an all-inclusive epithet" that had "a spiteful
> connotation." Utilizing the Náhuatl terms for dog  (chichi) and rope
> (mecatl), the Aztecs referred to the Chichimecas literally as "of dog
> lineage." But some historians have explained that the word Chichimeca has
> been subject to various interpretations over the years, including "perros
> altaneros" (arrogant dogs), or "chupadores de sangre" (blood-suckers). The
> Spaniards borrowed this designation from their Aztec allies and started to
> refer to the large stretch Chichimeca territory as La Gran Chichimeca (the
> Great Chichimeca)." –from  THE DIVERSITY OF INDIGENOUS MEXICO By John P.
> Schmal (http://www.somosprimos.com/spmar02.htm)
>

The reason I'm curious about it is that it seems as though a picture of a
dog attacking a person might relate to "dog + rope." The odd thing about the
picture is that the artist didn't make it clear whether the rope was
attached to the person or to the dog, maybe indicating it wasn't an
eyewitness report by the artist. This is the picture:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/4912/3197/1600/b73-1599-trial-Cholula-1519.0.jpg
I wonder whether the horrible attack dog and the mild-mannered coyote might
have to do with the Chichimecas and the Dominicans respectively, since
Bartholome de las Casas was a Dominican. In other words it's a reminder that
Las Casas was horrified by such crimes. (In Christian art dogs are sometimes
very positive and sometimes very negative.) But maybe the dog and rope in
the picture have nothing to do with Chichimecas. My question is whether it
seems as though this picture has to do with bilingual picture writing, where
both a Nahuatl and a Latin word are broken down into short words. In other
words it seems as though the same method of language teaching might be
working in both directions. But on the other hand, is a Chichimeca word
being distorted in order to translate it into Nahuatl and then into Spanish?

Susan Gilchrist
http://elboscoblog.blogspot.com/
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