Nahua toponyms

[Magnus Pharao Hansen]

Dr. Sullivan: before reading your response I realized the weakness of my
proposed translation of teotihuacan: you are right /ka:n/ is used for
placenames derived form nominals!  It should be teotihuaya:n for my
etymology to work. However holyfireowneragentplace still doesn't convince me
either.

About placenames and sacred landscapes, I think it would be a mistake to
believe that because some placenames are obviously tied to the mexica myth
of origin that others necessarily are as well. As Dr. Wright is correct that
the mexica were late arrivals in Mesoamerica and many places presumably had
names before their arrival. These placenames could well be named according
to other mythical frameworks than exactly the aztlan-chicomoztoc myth. And
we have no way of knowing which placenames have  pre-mexica roots and which
haven't. I think for example that Dr. Wright argues very convincingly that
Mexico is a Nahua calque of an earlier oto-pamean placename. The moon was a
much more central deity to the oto-pame peoples than to the Nahuas.

I agree that placenames are tied to cosmovision - but I think it is
erroneous to assume that this must necessarily be in the sense of myths of
origin. I think that most probably a lot of placenames are connected to
cosmovision by linking humans to their environment through their common
history. Much in the same way that Keith Basso has described for the Cibecue
Apache in "Wisdom sits in places".

 For example In the area where I have done most of my  research - north
eastern Morelos - I have observed placenames that are quite newly coined.
The northern part of the town of Hueyapan is so newly settled that many
placenames are coined with in living memory of some inhabitants. The
Northern part of the barrio San Andrés for example was settled in the
1930'es by people moving out from the center which had become saturated and
the forest was cleared to make room for new solares. Talking to some of the
original settlers I asked why the northern part of San Andrés was called
/xonakayohka:n/ and i was told that this was because when they arrived the
ground there was full of special kind of poisonous onions that caused the
livestock to die. The settlers had to dig up all the onions in order to be
able to use the land - and the poisonous onions are now gone. Another
example is in the barrio of San Felipe where there is a place called
/poxahko/. I could not get anyone to explain the translation to me - most
people suggested it had to do with owls /poxakwa/ but I couldn't get that to
fit. Later i found that there was another place also called poxahko and I
realised that both were located on paths that ended blind - I surmised that
there had at one time been a word /poxahtle/, meaning cul-de-sac. I asked
and elderly Hueyapeño for such as word and I was told it meant a sleeping
bag for babies - which is much like a sack. Nobody had seen any connection
between that word and the places called poxahko (obviously because the -ko
locative suffix is not productive in Hueyapan) Obviously such a placename
hasn't got any relation to mythic events but simply describes a feature of
the (man made) landscape. Other placenames in Hueyapan of recent coinage are
/tetlalkwililpan/ which is the place of the first spanish rancho within
Hueyapan territory (founded after 1700) - the placename  means "on the lands
taken from someone". Another is /amillan/ "water-maize-fields" which is the
name of the first place in Hueyapan to have irrigated milpas - irrigation
systems was first introduced to Hueyapan in the late 19th century by a
priest who needed zacate for his livestock. In another village Tohtlan I
encountered the placenames tlantzitzikame and orrnotitlan, the first
obviously comes form i-tlan tzitzikame "by the ants" and the other stems
from a couple of large breadbaking ovens that were installed there not that
long ago. I don't see why placenaming customs in precolombian times would
have been considerably different or more "mythical" than the ones of the
colonial and modern Nahua.

Magnus
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