Etymology of "Mexico"

[Michael McCafferty]

Sorry. Just a short rejoinder. Out of curiosity I just looked up this 
place name in Karttunen's dictionary and found that she also has 
trouble accepting the "navel" explanation:

"The etymology of this [Me:xihco] is opaque. Because of the difference 
in vowel length, it cannot be derived from ME-TL 'maguey'. The sequence 
XIH also differs in vowel length from XI:C-TLI 'navel,' which has been 
proposed as a component element..."

Michael


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

> Muy estimado Michael:
>
> I'm glad we've gotten beyond the "messy phonology" argument to something
> more tangible, i.e. the possibility that one of Andrew's grammatical rules
> (/kk/ > /?k/) may be incorrect and that he offers little supporting evidence
> for it (only the toponym Me:xihco). The frequent lack of evidence and of
> showing where the examples are from is the weakest aspect of Andrews'
> Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. I often turn to this book for
> morphophonological information, since his treatment of this area goes beyond
> other sources I have at hand. You are right in being suspicious of the
> statements he makes without displaying his evidence. Usually when one looks
> for supporting evidence for Andrews' claims one finds them, but there may
> still be problems here and there (in spite of the fact that the 2003 edition
> was revised during a quarter of a century of constant use, although this is
> no guarantee). At any rate, the problem of /kk/ > /hk/ that you bring up
> needs to be solved. If no further examples turn up after an exhaustive
> search, this rule should be crossed out from our collective list of possible
> morphophonological changes. It occurs to me that a good place to start would
> be to read through Carochi with this doubt in mind. I wish I had a
> searchable digital version; that would make this task much quicker. Any
> other sources that consistently use the glottal stop (there aren't that
> many) should also be searched. I checked Launey's thesis but it he seems to
> have spread his comments on morphophonology throughout his lengthy text, so
> there's no quick fix. I don't have the time to solve this problem right now.
> If any listeros have pertinent data, it would be helpful if they shared it.
> The matter is of some importance.
>
> 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.
>
> 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).
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> As John Sullivan pointed out, central Mexican toponymical etymology involves
> going beyond morphological analysis and searching for the meanings behind
> the names. I pointed out that most toponyms passed from one central Mexican
> language to another as calques. Here's the data on the Otomi name for Mexico
> Tenochtitlan that I mentioned in  earlier post. It appears in the Huichapan
> Codex (BNAH Testimonios Pictográficos 35-60), with two words: anbondo and
> amadetzänä, sometimes written together, sometimes individually, much as we
> find Mexico and Tenochtitlan together or apart. The final 'o' in Anbondo
> represents a vowel midway between Spanish /o/ and /a/ and today is written
> by the Otomi with an underlined 'a' (except in the Mezquital, where this
> phoneme has shifted to /o/). So we have the singular nominal prefix an- with
> the word 'bonda (underlined 'a'), where ' is a glottal stop. It means "the
> red Opuntia fruit", the seedy fruit of the nopal cactus, of the sort that
> stains your mouth bright red when you eat it. (On a deeper level, this type
> of fruit is a metaphor for human hearts, food for the Sun, in Mexica
> literature and iconography, e.g. cuauhnochtli, "Opuntia fruit of the eagle",
> i.e. human hearts.) Anbondo is the semantic equivalent of the Nahuatl word
> tenochtli. The second Otomi toponym is Amadetzänä, which can be parsed as
> the singular nominal prefix (an - n) plus the adjective made ("middle") plus
> the word tsänä (today zänä in Mezquital Otomi and some other variants),
> "Moon". (The ä is a nasal /a/.) Thus Anbondo Amadetzänä can be translated
> "the red Opuntia fruit in the middle of the Moon".
>
> The close match between Rincon's translation of Mexico and the Otomi toponym
> Amadetsänä strongly supports the former's etymology.
>
> I guess that's all I have. I hope all this helps you to see the logic of the
> navel/middle of the Moon hypothesis. Thanks for motivating me to spend an
> interesting four hours looking at this problem and writing up the results.
> Hopefully someone will help us resolve the kk > hk question.
>
> Saludos respetuosos,
>
> David Wright
>
> ********************************************************************
> The problem with Andrews' explanation, David, is that it's a fallacy based
> on circular logic, with no supporting evidence.
>
> He explains the etymology of "Mexico," on page 500, on the basis of this
> putative /kk/ > /?k/ shift, basing this pronouncement on an earlier note in
> the explanation of Nahuatl phonology. The reader then goes to that note, on
> page 35, only to find that he says, well, /kk/ > /?k/...and we see this in
> the term... Mexihco. (!)  Bad reasoning. We need real evidence, many more
> examples. Andrews doesn't have any. :-)
>
> Now, on page 29 that you refer us to, Andrews simply states that the vowel
> before a glottal stop has to be short. Uh...
>
> None of the above serves to explain the etymology of /me:xihco/, as far as I
> can see.
>
> Saludos y buenos tardes,
>
> Michael
>
>




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