Etymology of "Mexico"

[Michael McCafferty]

For the record. This was a misunderstanding.

I didn't accept the /kk/ xi:cco going to /?k/ *in the first place*, so, 
what i intended to say was that, as far as I was concerned, no vowel 
shortening was possible. I still question the vowel shortening. It's 
very strange. Saludos y adios.

Michael

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

> Estimado Michael:
>
> First a correction. You say "You didn't understand my first posting. I never
> once questioned this
> fact. I have always known it to be true. / It's simply that long /i:/ to
> short /i/ was not possible *in the
> context /kk/*, **which is as far as I could take the etymologizing of the
> 'Mexicco'**."
>
> To be precise, you did question the vowel shortening (i: > i) in the context
> of Me:xihco, that is, where the /i:/ immediately precedes a glottal stop
> /h/. What you said was "However, one cannot simply say that the long /i:/ of
> /xi:ctli/ goes to short /i/ in /me:xihco/. That's a leap to the Moon itself.
> What is the basis for this vowel shortening? This is not expected." In your
> next post you said "Now, on page 29 that you refer us to, Andrews simply
> states that the vowel before a glottal stop has to be short. Uh..." (I take
> "Uh..." as an expression of doubt here, although it's a rather ambiguous
> term, especially in writing as opposed to speech, where intonation and
> gesture provide more clues.)
>
> Then you say "NOPE. Not accepted. Not proven. / I would have to side with
> John Sullivan and says that we are dealing with something else," regarding
> both etymologies, Me:xxi:cco and Me:xxihco. I would remind you that we are
> checking the grammatical and morphological viabilities of two etymological
> hypotheses, not (at least in my case) choosing a favorite and blindly
> defending it. There are other hypotheses to be checked, some coming from
> classical sources, and some listeros have made useful suggestions in this
> sense. Saying "NOPE" without further argument won't get us very far, nor
> will taking "sides," since the vaguely negated hypotheses remain on the
> discussion table, in spite of the use of upper case letters to make the
> negation more "forceful." Both the negation and the taking of sides are
> essentially non-arguments, providing no new arguments nor data.
>
> As for Carochi's use of Me:xihco in 1645, you say "All I see here is more
> circular reasoning." The Carochi reference is a step toward breaking out of
> Andrews' loop. It is independent confirmation of Andrews' use of this form,
> coming from a highly informed source of the first half of the colonial
> period, who worked with a corpus of older documents and with the
> collaboration of a team of linguistically sophisticated native speakers in
> the linguistically oriented Jesuit college at Tepotzotlán, north of Mexico
> City (sometimes called "el círculo de Carochi" in recent scholarship). The
> sophistication of this team can be seen in the manuscripts they produced.
> Some are in the Bancroft Library and have been published by fellow listero
> Barry Sell in colaboration with Louise Burkhart. Karttunen used these as a
> source for restoring long vowels and glottal stops in her dictionary. I've
> done preliminary studies of manuscripts in Otomi coming from the Otomi
> "círculo de Carochi" at Tepotzotlán; one is at the Newberry, another at
> Princeton, a third at the BNAH in Mexico City.
>
> As for Rincón's use in 1595 of Mexicco, you say "Well...sorry. I see 'Moon'
> but I don't see 'navel'. All I smell is
> folk-etymology, and native speakers are abundantly capable of
> folk-etymologizing." Considering Rincón's translation, "en medio de la
> luna", we have me:tztli, "Moon," as the only word with this meaning in
> Nahuatl that begins with the sequence me, followed by the sequence xic, in a
> text where long vowels are not marked, with the meaning "middle," and the
> locative suffix -co at the end. The /x/ of xic would clearly justify
> suppressing the tz of me:tztli, at least in writing, which of course is what
> we're dealing with. Is there a better explanation, or even a remotely viable
> explanation, for a xic sequence having the meaning "middle," other than
> xi:ctli, "navel"? If there is, then we can spin another hypothesis and put
> it on the discussion table. If any hypothesis "works" within the known rules
> of early colonial central Mexican grammar, then it has a place on the table.
>
> Yes, native speakers of any language are capable of producing folk
> etymologies, but these aren't detected through the nose (what I'm trying to
> say is that the ground rules of science require that hunches be passed
> through the filters of rational, evidence-based analysis; hunches are part
> of the process, but in raw, unfiltered form they are of little consequence).
> Given the available evidence, determining the deep meaning of a central
> Mexican toponym in Nahuatl is often impossible, and all that scholars can do
> in many cases is to lay out all of the hypotheses that work, compare them to
> all the evidence available, and eliminate those that definitely don't work.
> We are often left with two or more possible etymologies, and all of these
> should be considered when applying these etymologies in our research (for
> example, in the analysis of pictorial signs in the native central Mexican
> scribal/artistic tradition). This doesn't play as well in the lecture hall
> as a well crafted piece of rhetoric where everything is neatly explained in
> a confident tone, but it gets our ideas a bit more in line with reality. One
> more point: if a lot of people in a society believe a folk etymology, then
> that etymology becomes culturally significant, regardless of the word's
> original meaning. Thus the meanings of toponyms may shift through time and
> space, and these shifts become important parts of the picture we're looking
> at. Needless to say they can affect the spelling of the words (and the way
> they are painted or carved in the pictorial texts).
>
> Finally, the Otomi calque Anbondo Amadetzänä, coinciding in meaning with the
> hypothetical etymologies Me:xxi:cco and Me:xxihco as "in the navel/middle of
> the Moon," is significant and deserves consideration. At least among western
> Mezquital Otomi of the early 17th century this was the meaning. The toponym
> "Mexicco," however you parse it, had the same meaning for a late 16th
> century indigenous noble from Texcoco, Rincón, who wrote an important
> description of his mother tongue, being the first to explain the importance
> of vowel length contrast and the glottal stop. Considering the weight of all
> of this evidence, I think it would be careless to dismiss Me:xxi:cco or
> Me:xxihco at this point. John Sullivan's recent post on the /kk/ > /hk/
> problem would seem to tip the scales somewhat in favor of accepting Andrews'
> morphophonological rule in this case (although I don't consider the matter
> closed), which means that for now I have to leave the Me:xxihco ("in the
> navel of the Moon") hypothesis on the table.
>
> I hope this helps put things into focus and/or clears up at least some of
> your doubts. And above all, keep doubting; that's how knowledge advances.
>
> Con todo respeto,
>
> David Wright
>
> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: Michael McCafferty [mailto:mmccaffe at indiana.edu]
> Enviado el: domingo, 26 de julio de 2009 03:31 p.m.
> Para: David Wright
> CC: Nahuat-l (messages)
> Asunto: RE: [Nahuat-l] Etymology of "Mexico"
>
> Quoting David Wright <dcwright at prodigy.net.mx>:
>
>>>
>> 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.
>
> David:
>
> You didn't understand my first posting. I never once questioned this
> fact. I have always known it to be true.
>
> It's simply that long /i:/ to short /i/ was not possible *in the
> context /kk/*, **which is as far as I could take the etymologizing of
> the "Mexicco"**.
>
>>
>> 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).
>
>
> NOPE. Not accepted. Not proven.
>
> I would have to side with John Sullivan and says that we are dealing
> with something else.
>
>
>>
>> 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.
>
>
> Is it just me? All I see here is more circular reasoning.
>
>>
>> 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.
>
>
> Well...sorry. I see "Moon" but I don't see "navel". All I smell is
> folk-etymology, and native speakers are abundantly capable of
> folk-etymologizing.
>
>
> I don't have internet at home these days, so I'll have to print this up
> and take it home. I'll study it and see if I can come to the same
> conclusions that you have. But so far, no good. But thanks for the
> ideas.
>
> Best,
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
>




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