HEAVEN BORN MERIDA AND ITS DESTINY - Histomesoamericana

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INTRODUCTION
conquest, though only some of them are mentioned in the Chumayel:
Chakan, Chikin Ch'el, Cozumel, Ecab, Uaymil, Tutul Xiu, and Chable.
It can hardly be coincidental that the number of provinces matches the
number of uinals in the tun, but this fact does not appear to be particularly
stressed. The Maya called Yucatan the Ordered Country, the Land of
the Ceiba, or the Four-Part Country (the fifth part was the center). The expression
Cycle Country [mayab], which occurs elsewhere, does not appear
in the Books, nor does the expression Land of the Deer and Pheasant.
If my surmise that there were 13 numeral prefixes for cities is correct, all
the major cycles of the calendar (4, 5, 13, and 18) may have been projected
onto Mayan geography. It is not clear how 7, 9, and 20 figured in, but they
must have been involved somehow terrestrially as they were cosmologically.
After all, Yucatan was the Ordered Country [tzol peten).
The place-names mentioned in the Chumayel are listed in the index,
and a ritual gazetteer of 171 of them will be found in chapter 12 and
appendix B.
Onomastics. The Yucatecans do not appear to have used the naming
system, based on the uinal, that was employed throughout Middle America
to name individuals. They knew about it, of course, but the only
example in the Chumayel is Nahuat: Five Flower. This appears in both
Nahuat and Maya (Macuilxuchit, Ho Nicte), but Flower is not a day name
in Maya. The naming of persons in Yucatan was almost entirely a matter
of lineage.
A proper name in Maya was always binary: it was composed of a maternal
patronymic and a paternal one, in that order. Thus Yax Chuen's
mother's father was a Yax and his father was a Chuen. Patrilineages were
the basic units of Mayan society, and they were rigidly exogamous. If Yax
Chuen's wife were Ek Balam, their children would be named Balam Chuen.
They would be eligible to marry someone named Yax Ek or Ek Yax, including
their first cross-cousins, but they could not marry a Chuen or a
Balam. Sometimes the name was preceded by the word Na 'mother', as
in Na Tzin Yabun, but that was not mandatory. It may indicate cases in
which the maternal patrilineage had higher status.
Having all one's siblings running around with the same name presented
obvious problems. These were solved by adding titles, usually prefixed,
and nicknames, usually suffixed, as in Ah Kin Na Ahau Pech Chan 'the
sun priest (mother) lord tick the younger' (the example is a hypothetical
composite) or Uayom Ch'ich' Chich 'sleeping bird the strong' (lines 695-
696). Sometimes the order of elements was inverted, as in Kin Ich Kak Mo
'sun face fire macaw' or Kukul Can Ah Nacxit 'quetzal snake priest of
Four Leg'. Proper names were sometimes inflected, particularly the maternal
patronymic, taking the suffix -VI or -il, as in Yaxal Chac, Kukul Can,
or Ulil Ahau. This may have been primarily for euphony and clarity of
enunciation.
A number of the 150 to 200 recorded lineage names were common to
the Xiu and the Itza: Ahau, Amayte, Ay, Chac, Coc, Itzam, Kak, Kau,
Mo, Puc, Zac. Others were not. The Xiu frequently had Nahuat names: