[Nahuat-l] Understanding of a folk etymology

jonathan.amith at yale.edu jonathan.amith at yale.edu
Fri Apr 24 10:43:35 CDT 2009


Yes, Galen, of course you are right. The 52 x 5 gives the added 260 
days/ cycle.

Too long without looking at calendars!

Quoting Galen Brokaw <brokaw at buffalo.edu>:

> Hi Jonathan,
>
> I think the "in vain" part of the meaning has to do with the special 
> status of these days, which I understand were considered kind of 
> dangerous or unlucky. But the nemontemi days would have to have had 
> day signs as well as numbers. It is just that these five days with 
> their day signs did not belong to one of the regular months. If they 
> didn't have signs, then the name of the year, based either on the 
> sign of the last or the first day of the year, would always be the 
> same. Those five days are the reason that the names of the years 
> change and were limited to four. If you name your year after the sign 
> and the number of the first day of the year, for example, you run 
> through the cycle of twenty signs eighteen times over the course of 
> the year, then you have the five days of the nemontemi. So the first 
> day of the nemontemi is the beginning of another cycle of the twenty 
> day signs. This means that the first day of the nemontemi will have 
> the same day sign as the first day of that year, which means that the 
> first day of the next solar year will be the sixth sign in the 
> sequence (the day after the five day-signs of the nemontemi). And the 
> first day of the following year will be the 11th sign in the 
> sequence, then the sixteenth, and then the first again. In other 
> words, the names of the year will keep cycling through this four-sign 
> sequence. The continuing cycle of thirteen numbers that matches up to 
> these signs works out so that if the number corresponding to the 
> first day of the first year is 1, then the number of the first day of 
> the next year will be 2, and so on. And the combination of the cycle 
> of four years signs with the thirteen numbers is what produces the 52 
> year Mesoamerican "century" (4 x 13 = 52). If the name of the year is 
> based on the last day of the year, it works the same way, because any 
> given calendrical day of any given year will be offset by five signs 
> and one number from the corresponding day of the previous and the 
> subsequent years.
>
> Galen
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> jonathan.amith at yale.edu wrote:
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-- 
Jonathan D. Amith
Director: Mexico-North Program on Indigenous Languages
Research Affiliate: Gettysburg College; Yale University; University of Chicago
(O) 717-337-6795
(H) 717-338-1255
Mail to:
Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology
Gettysburg College
Campus Box 412
300 N. Washington Street
Gettysburg, PA  17325



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