atzontzompantla

[Michael McCafferty]

Quoting John Sullivan <idiez at me.com>:

> Tom,
> 	You're right. This is a hard "altepenym", but let's go through and
> look at a few things we DO know.
> 1. The vast majority of altepenyms are composed of a noun stuck onto
> a locative root. Here there are two possibilities for the locative
> root. It is either a). -tlan, "town of the...." or b) -tlah, "town of
> abundant...." Since word final "n"s in multisyllable words are
> devoiced in Nahuatl, the "n" in -tlan is offen not included in
> spelling. And we know that "h", especially in the word final position
> is practically never written. So we really have no way of telling
> which of the endings is used for Atzontzompantla. But we know it's
> one of the two.

Yes, John. This information is true. In fact, it was discussed at some 
length within the last year or so by this discussion group. It's one of 
those little quirky aspects of Nahuatl onomastics. I'm glad you 
mentioned it.  -Michael


> John Sullivan, Ph.D.
> Professor of Nahua language and culture
> Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
> Zacatecas Institute of Teaching and Research in Ethnology
> Tacuba 152, int. 43
> Centro Histórico
> Zacatecas, Zac. 98000
> Mexico
> Work: +52 (492) 925-3415
> Fax: +1 (858) 724-3030 (U.S.A.)
> Home: +52 (492) 768-6048
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> idiez at me.com
> www.macehualli.org
>
>




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