Trecena, veintena and the Nahuatl term for month

[Gordon Whittaker]

Dear Georges Baert,

Your Nahuatl "meztli" is close, but not quite right. It's actually a
common error in popular literature based on Spanish mes. The real Nahuatl
word is metztli, with a long /e/ vowel.

It would, of course, be great if someone could inform us as to when the
Spanish terms veintena and trecena are used for the first time in the
precise Mesoamerican nominal context we are used to. I think we all know
the basic meanings of the terms, just not yet their first occurrences as
terms for Mesoamerican units of time. I would suspect Motolinia (if not
Molina), but have no access to the literature from my isolated beach in
Italy, so who knows. Perhaps the terms are modern, perhaps not.

Best,
Gordon Whittaker

Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:40:15 +0200
From: <lahunik.62 at skynet.be>
Subject: Nahuatl, trecena and veintena

Dear Sir:

The month of 20 days is in Nahuatl: Meztli.

Trecena and veintena, derived from the Spanish trece and viente, are rather
modern terms used by Mesoamericanists.

No friar of the Post-Conquest period used this terms.

The Nahuatl word for trecena was no longer known, neither for the term
veintena.

No record of the veintena survives in a Central Mexican manuscript made
before the Conquest, because it did not play the same role in divination,
that the trecena, as part of the tonalpohualli did.

Lahun Ik 62

Baert Georges

Flanders Fields



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