<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Earlier this year William Davidson asked me about a possible etymology , and the following is a suggestion I came up with, but without reference to historical sources: <div><br></div><div><div>That it might come from a compound of tekwisi 'crab', which I found glossed that by in sources on Pipil (Lyle Campbell and Schulze Jena), and other southern dialects, and<span style="font-size: 16px; "> -kal- (-cal/-gal-), which basically means 'hard-sided recipient', so I think tekwisi-kal-pa would mean 'place of the crab-shells'. Many translators have glossed compound words with -calli somewhat poetically as 'house of...', on the basis that -cal-li is 'house' in Nahuatl, but if you compare all the forms, it would seem more reasonable that it means here 'shell'. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; ">Then tekwisikalpan went through changes : tekwi- > tegu- and -kal- > -gal- and -pan > -pa, so that you have te-gu-si-gal-pa. The -cal- may also indicate a shellin the word for 'shrimp', achacalin 'large shrimp' (Wimmer), Mecayapan (Wolgemuth) and Pipil (Campbell) chacalin 'shrimp'. </span></span></div><div><br></div><div>And according to Professor Davidson, there are a number of placenames that include the word for 'crab' in the area, so it would fit the general ecology to have a place named after them.</div><div><br></div><div>Karen Dakin</div><div><br></div></div></body></html>