Etymology of "Mexico"

[David Wright]

Estimado Michael:

First a correction. You say "You didn't understand my first posting. I never
once questioned this 
fact. I have always known it to be true. / It's simply that long /i:/ to
short /i/ was not possible *in the 
context /kk/*, **which is as far as I could take the etymologizing of the
'Mexicco'**."

To be precise, you did question the vowel shortening (i: > i) in the context
of Me:xihco, that is, where the /i:/ immediately precedes a glottal stop
/h/. What you said was "However, one cannot simply say that the long /i:/ of
/xi:ctli/ goes to short /i/ in /me:xihco/. That's a leap to the Moon itself.
What is the basis for this vowel shortening? This is not expected." In your
next post you said "Now, on page 29 that you refer us to, Andrews simply
states that the vowel before a glottal stop has to be short. Uh..." (I take
"Uh..." as an expression of doubt here, although it's a rather ambiguous
term, especially in writing as opposed to speech, where intonation and
gesture provide more clues.)

Then you say "NOPE. Not accepted. Not proven. / I would have to side with
John Sullivan and says that we are dealing with something else," regarding
both etymologies, Me:xxi:cco and Me:xxihco. I would remind you that we are
checking the grammatical and morphological viabilities of two etymological
hypotheses, not (at least in my case) choosing a favorite and blindly
defending it. There are other hypotheses to be checked, some coming from
classical sources, and some listeros have made useful suggestions in this
sense. Saying "NOPE" without further argument won't get us very far, nor
will taking "sides," since the vaguely negated hypotheses remain on the
discussion table, in spite of the use of upper case letters to make the
negation more "forceful." Both the negation and the taking of sides are
essentially non-arguments, providing no new arguments nor data.

As for Carochi's use of Me:xihco in 1645, you say "All I see here is more
circular reasoning." The Carochi reference is a step toward breaking out of
Andrews' loop. It is independent confirmation of Andrews' use of this form,
coming from a highly informed source of the first half of the colonial
period, who worked with a corpus of older documents and with the
collaboration of a team of linguistically sophisticated native speakers in
the linguistically oriented Jesuit college at Tepotzotlán, north of Mexico
City (sometimes called "el círculo de Carochi" in recent scholarship). The
sophistication of this team can be seen in the manuscripts they produced.
Some are in the Bancroft Library and have been published by fellow listero
Barry Sell in colaboration with Louise Burkhart. Karttunen used these as a
source for restoring long vowels and glottal stops in her dictionary. I've
done preliminary studies of manuscripts in Otomi coming from the Otomi
"círculo de Carochi" at Tepotzotlán; one is at the Newberry, another at
Princeton, a third at the BNAH in Mexico City.

As for Rincón's use in 1595 of Mexicco, you say "Well...sorry. I see 'Moon'
but I don't see 'navel'. All I smell is 
folk-etymology, and native speakers are abundantly capable of
folk-etymologizing." Considering Rincón's translation, "en medio de la
luna", we have me:tztli, "Moon," as the only word with this meaning in
Nahuatl that begins with the sequence me, followed by the sequence xic, in a
text where long vowels are not marked, with the meaning "middle," and the
locative suffix -co at the end. The /x/ of xic would clearly justify
suppressing the tz of me:tztli, at least in writing, which of course is what
we're dealing with. Is there a better explanation, or even a remotely viable
explanation, for a xic sequence having the meaning "middle," other than
xi:ctli, "navel"? If there is, then we can spin another hypothesis and put
it on the discussion table. If any hypothesis "works" within the known rules
of early colonial central Mexican grammar, then it has a place on the table.

Yes, native speakers of any language are capable of producing folk
etymologies, but these aren't detected through the nose (what I'm trying to
say is that the ground rules of science require that hunches be passed
through the filters of rational, evidence-based analysis; hunches are part
of the process, but in raw, unfiltered form they are of little consequence).
Given the available evidence, determining the deep meaning of a central
Mexican toponym in Nahuatl is often impossible, and all that scholars can do
in many cases is to lay out all of the hypotheses that work, compare them to
all the evidence available, and eliminate those that definitely don't work.
We are often left with two or more possible etymologies, and all of these
should be considered when applying these etymologies in our research (for
example, in the analysis of pictorial signs in the native central Mexican
scribal/artistic tradition). This doesn't play as well in the lecture hall
as a well crafted piece of rhetoric where everything is neatly explained in
a confident tone, but it gets our ideas a bit more in line with reality. One
more point: if a lot of people in a society believe a folk etymology, then
that etymology becomes culturally significant, regardless of the word's
original meaning. Thus the meanings of toponyms may shift through time and
space, and these shifts become important parts of the picture we're looking
at. Needless to say they can affect the spelling of the words (and the way
they are painted or carved in the pictorial texts).

Finally, the Otomi calque Anbondo Amadetzänä, coinciding in meaning with the
hypothetical etymologies Me:xxi:cco and Me:xxihco as "in the navel/middle of
the Moon," is significant and deserves consideration. At least among western
Mezquital Otomi of the early 17th century this was the meaning. The toponym
"Mexicco," however you parse it, had the same meaning for a late 16th
century indigenous noble from Texcoco, Rincón, who wrote an important
description of his mother tongue, being the first to explain the importance
of vowel length contrast and the glottal stop. Considering the weight of all
of this evidence, I think it would be careless to dismiss Me:xxi:cco or
Me:xxihco at this point. John Sullivan's recent post on the /kk/ > /hk/
problem would seem to tip the scales somewhat in favor of accepting Andrews'
morphophonological rule in this case (although I don't consider the matter
closed), which means that for now I have to leave the Me:xxihco ("in the
navel of the Moon") hypothesis on the table.

I hope this helps put things into focus and/or clears up at least some of
your doubts. And above all, keep doubting; that's how knowledge advances.

Con todo respeto,

David Wright

-----Mensaje original-----
De: Michael McCafferty [mailto:mmccaffe at indiana.edu] 
Enviado el: domingo, 26 de julio de 2009 03:31 p.m.
Para: David Wright
CC: Nahuat-l (messages)
Asunto: RE: [Nahuat-l] Etymology of "Mexico"

Quoting David Wright <dcwright at prodigy.net.mx>:

>>
> As for vowels before glottal stops being short, you don't need page 29 of
> Andrews 2003 to see this; it's basic Nahuatl phonology. Just run through
any
> of the grammars and dictionaries that mark vowel length and glottal stops
> (Carochi, Andrews, Launey, Campbell/Karttunen, Karttunen, Wolf, and
> Bierhorst) and you'll see how it works.

David:

You didn't understand my first posting. I never once questioned this 
fact. I have always known it to be true.

It's simply that long /i:/ to short /i/ was not possible *in the 
context /kk/*, **which is as far as I could take the etymologizing of 
the "Mexicco"**.

>
> So we have one possible analysis of the toponym "Mexico" that works as "in
> the navel of the Moon", in which the optional regressive dissimilation
> proposed by Andrews (kk > hk) is not applied:
>
> Me:xxi:cco ((me:tztli - tli) + (xi:ctli - tli) (tz + x > xx) + co).
>
> In the latter analysis the only morphophonological change required is the
> regressive assimilation tzx > xx which you have accepted as
"nuts-and-bolts
> Nahuatl phonetics".
>
> The second form, which depends on the optional kk > hk dissimilation, is
> essentially the same as the latter, except for the first c (/k/) becoming
h
> (/?/), with the required shortening of the long vowel (i: > i).


NOPE. Not accepted. Not proven.

I would have to side with John Sullivan and says that we are dealing 
with something else.


>
> Me:xxihco ((me:tztli - tli) + (xi:ctli - tli) (i: > i) (tz + x > xx) + co
(c
> + c > hc).
>
> Either form, Me:xxi:cco or Me:xxihco, can be translated "in the navel of
the
> Moon". Either would have usually been written "Mexico" in standard
> "Franciscan" orthography, since long vowels were not marked, glottal stops
> were rarely written, and double consonants were usually written as single.
> (Exceptionally, I've seen xx in Franciscan orthography, e.g. "inimexxaiac"
> (in i:mexxa:yac), "su cara [máscara] de [piel de] muslo", in book 2,
chapter
> 30 of the Florentine Codex.)
>
> In support of Me:xxihco, we have Carochi (book 3, chapter 11) writing
> Me:xihco (I've changed his macron into a colon for the long e, and his
> accent over the i to an h to sneak it by the Internet gremlins; these
don't
> alter the underlying phonology.) This is not a typo. In book 1, chapter 2,
> he writes Mexihcatl (person from the city of Mexico) and Mexihcah (people
> from the city of Mexico). Here he seems to have forgotten to mark the long
> vowels; in book 3, chapter 11 we find Me:xicah and Me:xicah. The usual
> procedure with these gentile names, derived from toponyms ending in the
> locative suffix -co, is to remove the -co and add the gentilic suffix -ca
> plus -tl for singular or -h for the plural. Carochi didn't write the
double
> x, but this can be considered normal in colonial period Nahuatl texts.
>
> So there we have a non-Andrews example of Me:xihco. That would tend to
> reinforce Andrews' kk > hk regressive dissimilation, assuming the presence
> of the root xi:c, although additional examples are still needed.


Is it just me? All I see here is more circular reasoning.

>
> Carochi's mentor, the Jesuit priest and native Nahuatl speaker Antonio del
> Rincón, descendant of the royal house of Texcoco and author of a Nahuatl
> grammar (Arte Mexicana) published in 1595, has something to say on this
> matter, as I mentioned briefly in a recent post, providing the citation.
> (Unfortunately, although he explains how he used diacritics to mark
glottal
> stops in his text, the printer was unable to reproduce them and they were
> omitted from the published version; as far as I know the original
manuscript
> has not surfaced.) Here is what Rincón says, in the first chapter of book
4
> (folio 50 recto and verso of the 1595 edition):
>
> "Nota lo primero que en qualquier composicion el nombre que pierde algo
con
> la composicion es el que tiene la significacion en oblico, o como adjetivo
> v.g. [...] Mexico. en medio de la luna, porque perdio el tli, el nombre,
> metztli y generalmente pierden los nombres la ultima en composicion, como
> con los genitivos de los pronombres."
>
> In his "Vocabulario breve", at the end of his Arte (without folio
numbers),
> we find this gloss:
>
> "Mexicco: ciudad de Mexico, i. en medio de la luna."
>
> It's pretty clear that he's thinking (me:tztli - tli) + (xi:ctli - tli)
(tzx
>> xx > x) + co, with xi:ctli, "navel", meaning "middle" in this context. At
> least I don't see any viable alternatives.


Well...sorry. I see "Moon" but I don't see "navel". All I smell is 
folk-etymology, and native speakers are abundantly capable of 
folk-etymologizing.


I don't have internet at home these days, so I'll have to print this up 
and take it home. I'll study it and see if I can come to the same 
conclusions that you have. But so far, no good. But thanks for the 
ideas.

Best,

Michael





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