<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Susan,<DIV><SPAN class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </SPAN>"Chichimeca" doesn't come from "dog" and "rope". "chichimecah" is a plural noun meaning "inhabitants of (the altepetl/town) Chichiman". A singular inhabitant would be "chichimecatl". The name of the town itself can be divided into "-man", an ending for names of towns in Nahuatl, and "chichi". There is a "chichi" meaning "dog" which has two short "i"s (Nahuatl distinguishes between short and long vowels), but the "chichi" in "chichimecatl" has two long "i"s, so it can't mean "dog". The "chichi" with long "i"s is a shortened form of the root for the Nahuatl words meaning "breast" and "milk". </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>The analysis of town names in Nahuatl is usually not that difficult. On the one hand, there is a fixed set of endings, of which "-man" is an option. On the other hand, you need to find out what the beginning portion, in this case "chichi", of the town name means. It has been my experience that the great majority of these town names are related to themes of Mesoamerican sacred landscape. So if you are trying to translated one of these names and your options include something having to do with landscape components of the migration (Aztlán, Chicomoztoc and Colhuahcan), go with that option. There is a very beautiful representation (in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca?) of the infant Nahua clan founders suckling from a gourd tree. This, along with the morphological analysis of the town names, is the kind of evidence you would want to look for in order to translate "chichimecah" and "chichiman".</DIV><DIV>John</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">John Sullivan, Ph.D.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Profesor de lengua y cultura nahua</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas, A.C.</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Tacuba 152, int. 47</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Centro Histórico</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Zacatecas, Zac. 98000</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">México</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Oficina: +52 (492) 925-3415</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Fax: +52 (492) 925-3416</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Domicilio: +52 (492) 768-6048</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Celular: +52 (492) 118-0854</DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><A href="mailto:idiez@mac.com">idiez@mac.com</A></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">www.idiez.org.mx<SPAN></SPAN><SPAN></SPAN></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><SPAN></SPAN></DIV></BODY></HTML>