Tegucigalpa

[Karen Dakin]

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:

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 -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'.  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'.

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.

Karen Dakin

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