[Aztlan] why "the maya"

[Jules Siegel]

David and Fiona Gray wrote:

 > I have recently read John Montgomery's book on Maya languages.I'm a 
bit confused as to where the term Maya came from. Is it a name that has 
been assigned to them because it is not really known what they called 
them selves or is there some other explanation.

I asked a similar question just about a year ago and received the 
following reply, which for some reason is not found in the list archives.

On Nov 7, 2006, at 10:22 PM, Jules Siegel wrote:

 >> When did the people we call the Maya start calling themselves Maya?

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Aztlan] Origins of the term Maya
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 05:55:49 -0500
From: David Mora-Marin <davidmm at email.unc.edu>
To: Jules Siegel <siegel at cafecancun.com>
CC: Aztlan <aztlan at lists.famsi.org>

Excellent question/point!

Not until rather recently, and through some really complex process of 
diffusion, semantic shift, and cultural appropriation by non-Mayan 
nations (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador) and reappropriation 
by Mayan peoples.

Maya' T'an or Mayab' T'an is the name of the language spoken in the 
Yucatan (aka Yucatec/Yukatek), as called by the speakers of the language 
themselves. They also call themselves and their region (the Yucatan) 
Maya'/Mayab'. As far as I can tell the best etymology--given that it is 
also a word for the region--is based on the term maya'/mayab' 'flat' (a 
good description for most of the Yucatan). However, there are other 
etymologies out there.

Now, I don't know the historical details, but the following is roughly 
what seems to have happened afterward. The term was applied by Spaniards 
and others (including scholars) to all the languages that are related to 
Maya' T'an (Yucatec). And then the term was apparently claimed by the 
indigenous peoples themselves in Guatemala, for example, especially by 
the relatively few educated and poplitically active indigenous speakers 
of Mayan languages. The Mexican and Guatemalan governments both used 
this term to refer to the cultural heritage of these various peoples, as 
did archaeologists and linguists for example. Today many linguistically 
trained or knowledgeable indigenous scholars in Guatemala use the term 
to promote unity among the indigenous groups in Guatemala (in fact, the 
Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala includes non-Mayan languages 
under their umbrella).

So it's simply a really messy term anyway you look at it.

David

---End forwarded message---

When I visited the ruins of Tulum in 1983, the lone guide informed me 
very emphatically that the people of this region never called themselves 
Maya until the Conquest. He said that they used Itzá, among other names, 
but but that when the Spaniards began to speak to them in Spanish they 
answered, “Ma-u-than,” which may be translated “Don’t understand your 
language.” This was later evidently misinterpreted as “Mayat’an,” or 
language of the Maya.

I've seen this explanation before, but I lost the reference. Here are 
related items, referring to Yucatan:

"When the Spaniards discovered this land, their leader asked the Indians 
how it was called; as they did not understand him, they said uic athan, 
which means what do you say or what do you speak, that we do not 
understand you. And then the Spaniard ordered it set down that it be 
called Yucatan..." --Antonio de Ciudad Real, 1588, according to Inga 
Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquest, Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 
1517-1570, Cambridge University Press.

And, from "Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (discoverer of Yucatán)," 
Wikipedia, <http://tinyurl.com/2v9m9w>:

"It is probable that the first narrator of the "I don't understand" 
story was Fray Toribio de Benavente, a.k.a. Motolinia, who at the end of 
chapter 8 of the third book of his Historia de los indios de la Nueva 
España (History of the Indians of New Spain, written c. 1541) says: 
"because speaking with those Indians of that coast, to that which the 
Spaniards asked the Indians responded: Tectetán, Tectetán, which means: 
I don't understand you, I don't understand you: the Christians corrupted 
the word, and not understanding what the Indians meant, said: Yucatán is 
the name of this land; and the same happened with a cape made by the 
land there, which they named the Cape of Cotoch, and Cotoch in that 
language means house."

I also see that Matthew Restall has a paper, "Maya Ethnogenesis" 
<www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/jlat.2004.9.1.64> that appears to 
deal with some of these issues. I am purchasing it now and will report 
more after I read it.


-- 
JULES SIEGEL Apdo. 1764, 77501-Cancun, Q. Roo, Mexico
http://www.cafecancun.com/bookarts

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