Month: December 2025

Of Aardvarks, Horses, and Hairless Dogs

mayoid

by Stephen Houston (Brown University)

What a puzzle is the aardvark, at least to early Dutch settlers in South Africa. For them, the best word for the creature was aardvarken, from terms in their language for “earth” (aarde) and “pig” (varken), logical in light of the animal’s burrowing habits in search of ants and termites (Figure 1; Cresswell 2021). To the Dutch, as with many people, the unfamiliar could be named by likening it to the familar. Local knowledge (from Europe, of pigs) went global (to South Africa, of an animal subsisting on ants and termites) under conditions of imperial or mercantile expansion (Ogilvie 2006:209, 222; Ritvo 1987:244). In the same way, conquistadores and settlers in the Americas found counterparts to their léon (puma), piña, “pine-cone” (pineapple), and the níspero, “medlar fruit” (sapodilla), often based on deep circum-Mediterranean models (Rojas 2007:137). To assign names was to assert control, as an Adamic privilege that applied words to new things (Borkfelt 2011:118). But mostly it concerned a search for an intelligible frame of reference. The local Khoisan term for aardvark, gi, would have been perfectly serviceable, even nicely monosyllabic (Bleek 1956:279). For whatever reason, the Dutch created another word.

Figure 1. Orycteropus afer (Aardvark), Robert Jacob Gordon, 1777-10 to 1786-03, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/object/—6de055c8c5599076d28edbc90fe82b1c).

 

Sometimes people go to the animal. Big game hunters, bagging tigers and other ferocious creatures, come especially to mind (Ritvo 1987:269–288). At other moments the animal goes to people, for the most part unwillingly. The aardvark was never going to become a favorite pet in Europe, as did indeed happen with certain birds from distant lands (Plumb 2015:7, 22). The quadruped’s nocturnal movements, sharp claws, solitary nature, and incorrigible digging made that unlikely. Yet exotic or novel creatures could be assembled by rulers or, at later date, by entrepeneurs in a “symbolism of conquest and acquisition” (Ritvo 1987:207, 225). Rare animals might acquire celebrity status and even personal names (for how names might be classified, see Zelinsky 2002:253–58). In 19th-century England, Sally the chimpanzee, Obaysch the hippopotamus, and Chunee the elephant had their fan base, although the beasts could prove mettlesome to handlers. Chunee, increasingly excitable and thought to be a danger, died hard after being dosed with arsenic, shot with repeated rifle volleys, and, as the coups de grâce, savaged by vigorous thrusts of a keeper’s sword (Ritvo 1987:226–28). Other less famous animals might turn “on children who teased” them or gain a clouded reputation by fighting “aggressive neighborhood dogs” (Ritvo 1987:225). The process of acquiring these creatures was itself complex and many-staged, not just engaging merchants or imperial agents but “explorers, military officers…professional hunters and collectors” (Ritvo 1987:246). Trophies could be collected, live animals too, although they would be harder to transport.

Historical and archaeofaunal evidence shows that “charismatic” animals could be transported and kept in Mesoamerica, often as a resource for sacrifice. Presumably, they also exemplified the reach of empire and far-flung trade. In a few cases, other animals might have reminded immigrants of distant homelands. These include, perhaps, a spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi) found at Teotihuacan, where none occur naturally (Sugiyama et al. 2022:4, 12). Dating to ca. 250 to 300 CE, one specimen was captured at about 3 ya, kept for 2 years in an urban sector linked to the Maya (who certainly knew the species well), nurtured on human foods, mostly of maize, and then trussed like a person for sacrifice, hands behind its back. This treatment might have reflected the perceived nature of monkeys as inherent paradoxes, like people yet markedly different from them. Other “wild” animals in the city were fed rabbits or hares, dogs, and, according to a suggestion from Aztec evidence, even human flesh, or they were taxidermied for display (Sugiyama, Somerville, and Schoeninger 2015:5, 7, 9–10, fig. 3). Distinct damage to the bone suggests that some were tethered by cords. At Copan, Honduras, most large felids were taken wild, but several appear to have eaten foods supplied by people (Sugiyama, Fash, and France 2018:18).

Later “zoos,” if that is quite the right word for them, were kept by Aztec emperors close to the great plaza at Tenochtitlan, near the palace of the last ruler, Moteuczoma II (Houston and Newman 2021). The Nuremberg woodcut of 1524, among the few to portray this Dom[us] a[n]i[m]aliu[m], “House of the Animals,” displays individual cages for birds and animals, many of them probably for sacrifice but, just as likely, intended for pleasurable viewing by Aztec rulers and courtiers (Blanco et al. 2009:34–35; for the Nuremberg map of Tenochtitlan, see Boone 2011; Mundy 1998). That the creatures discharged only one function seems improbable. Possibly, some were kept for medicinal purposes, rather like rare animals in other parts of the world (Alves and Rosa 2005). Further, the act of keeping “wild” animals transformed them by means of new foods and sometimes clothing. The result was a set of beings closer to humans than not (Newman 2025). 

The new and the unexpected might include charismatic creatures like horses. Elsewhere, far from the Aztec and Maya, the size, speed, and ridability of these animals fascinated those seeing them for the first time. In dynastic Egypt, texts and images record horses just before, during, and after the Hyksos invasions of the Second Intermediate Period, 1759 to c. 1539 BCE (Figure 2; Collombert 2022:29, fig. 72; Delpeut and Köpp-Junk 2025:123, 126–27; Goldwasser 2017:48, 49; Vernus 2009:12–13). Lexically, the animals triggered several responses. An older term, ḥtr, “the yoked ones,” came to suffice for the new arrival, appearing first in royal texts, probably referring to beasts in prestigious chariots rather than to mundane teams of oxen (Goldwasser 2017:51; see also Vernus 2009:28–29, 36–38, for jḥ, and comments on the cultural stigmatization in Egypt of sitting directly on a horse; n.b., the horse in Figure 2, harnessed but unsaddled). A foreign loanword, ssmt or ssm, probably derived from Mesopotamian languages, and there was also ỉbr, “stallion,” from Canaanite (Goldwasser 2017:53, 55).

Figure 2. Novel horse logogram in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Tomb of Ramose, Thebes, 18th Dynasty (Collombert 2023:fig. 72).

 

Naming new kinds of animal could thus involve several maneuvers: (1) a native term could be recruited to label the newcomer; (2) a compound word innovated to describe some detail of the creature; (3) an entirely new coinage devised, or (4) a loanword imported or translated into a local language (Goldwasser 2017:58). The Maya were no different. In colonial Yukateko, horses were called tzimin after the term for “tapir,” a label also found in present-day Chontal (Tapirus bairdii; Barrera Vásquez, Ramón Bastarrachea, and Brito Sansores 1980:862; Ciudad Real 2001:165; Keller and Luciano Gerónimo 1997:257, 323; Tozzer 1941:203). This was hardly a far-fetched response. Both are large beasts that munch on plants…although try riding on a tapir! A Classic fantasy, the domain of wondrous, godly behavior, was to be carried by an animal, either a deer or a peccary; e.g. K1182 (a goddess on a deer), K1191, K8622 (God D on a peccary and deer, possibly fused respectively to the Hero Twins, to judge from the spots and jaguar pelage). As a word, tzimin clusters in the more northerly Mayan languages, and it may well have come from Yukateko (Kaufman, with Justeson n.d.:569).

To the south, in glyphic texts, tihl for “tapir” is well-attested, often in homophones for kindling fire, til (Grube 2000:94–95; Kaufman and Norman 1084:132). A slightly non-descript version of this animal on an unprovenanced vase in a private collection in Australia has both a glyphic caption (ti-la, tihl), and a small ti syllable appended to its forehead to clinch the identification (Houston and Scherer 2020:fig. 11). The attributive overkill implies a concern that the creature will not be recognized. Another option invokes a lexical analogy between the horse and another large, local beast, the “deer,” chij, as indeed occurs in Ch’orti’ (Hull 2016:98). Notably, this usage occurs in a region where the tapir, an endangered species, is rare to non-existent. (Found in several ecosystems, the tapir still prefers extensive moist forests with succulent secondary growth. Of late, the Ch’orti’ zone has anything but.) The Nahuatl language also linked deer to horses, but with the added nuance that the two animals tended to be morally wayward and innately non-Christian (Brylak 2019:371). Many Classic Maya animals probably had similar valences, if now faint. In myth, the deer was prone to stealing brides from the older, sickly, deer-like god of hunting (K1182, K1559, K2794, K4012, K8927, in the Kerr Database, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.).

Among the Maya, the original referent, the tapir, seems to have become detached from the word itself. Egyptians took loan words and massaged them phonologically for use in their own language. So too did the Maya, leading to Ch’ol cawayu’ from Spanish “caballo” (Aulie and Woodward de Aulie 1978:173). Another Lowland language, Tzeltal, employs kawayú, although, nodding to the outside world, it reciprocates by calling “elephants” muk’ul cemen, “big tapir,” the second word corresponding to Tzotzil tzemen (Hunn 1977:74, 146, 225, 230–31; Laughlin 1975:91). “Horse” in Tzotzil, ka’, clearly abbreviates the Spanish label (Laughlin 1975:163), and, when not using the word “deer,” chij, for “horse” or other large herbivores, the colonial precursor of that language went right to “caballo” (Laughlin 1988, I:95, 105, 132, 175, 190, 202). Another language of the colonial period, Ch’olti’, lumped horses with all manner of domesticated animals (alac), yet providing no specific term for this animal (Ringle n.d.). Admittedly, and lamentably, the lone source for that key language is sparse. 

To a more common animal: not the tapir but the dog, Canis lupus familiaris. There are grounds for believing that similar struggles took place in labeling them, especially in view of their many varieties. In the glyphs, two names are ok (now read ook, the appended ki establishing vowel length) and the extremely rare tzul, both identified long ago by Yuri Knorosov; these are supplemented by the tz’i’, dog,” decoded in the mid 1980s by David Stuart (Knorosov 1955:#64, 168, 169; 1956:212, fig. 32; Stuart 1987:8–10, fig. 13). What distinguishes the more common ook and tz’i’ is unclear. They may represent different breeds or, like words for “horse” in Mayan languages, the labels simply originate in different languages and then diffuse to others. Plausibly, ook transferred anciently from Mixe-Zoquean languages, with meanings that extended to “fox” or “coyote” (Wichmann 1999:306).

In Maya art, depictions of ook versus tz’i’ are hard to differentiate, but the former seem slightly more hairy, with stiff bristles like peccary, as delimited by sets of discontinuous parallel lines (Figure 3). A spot on the cheek may characterize both ook and tz’i’. Whiskers sprout from both, along with tufts of sagittal hair. Tz’i’ may be more short-haired, an advantage for hunting dogs. This helps them run through understory or vegetation, avoid heat-stroke, or poke into the burrows of paca, a prey ready to blind them with sharp claws: the Maya hunting dog is, in my experience, stout-hearted to the point of recklessness (for a spotted, short-haired, furrow-browed tz’i’, looking up to be scratched under the chin, see Tonina Monument 89; Stuart 2014). The ook sign, most common when recording the Maya day of that name, seems to have a simple, rounded ear (Thompson 1950:47, 52, 78–80, fig. 8). [Note 1] Like many references to animals, its ear (or, with other signs, the eye) can be isolated to cue the whole, with this being a special “earmark” (so to speak) of ook‘s occurence in the Dresden Codex. In part, the meaning may be sensorial. It alludes, possibly, to what gives creatures powers of perception beyond human capacity. To intriguing extent, it also fits with how children learn to identify animals. They begin with body parts and only later start to perceive wholes (Davidoff and Roberson 2002:230–31). In other words, a developmental proclivity stretches out to embrace a graphic one. But with ook, this pars pro toto fails to take place, evidently, when the animal is stressed, as opposed to merely the day name. Curiously, that name shifts, in a well-known tabulation by Eric Thompson, to tzih/tz’i/tzi in some Highland Mayan languages, blurring what appears to be a real distinction in Classic texts and imagery (Thompson 1950:table 3).

 

Figure 3. The ook, “dog,” in three depictions of a wahy spirit, Sak 3 Ook, with occasional, hybridized  attributes of felines, especially in the hair and paws: a) The Princeton Art Museum, Princeton, NJ PUAM# y1993-17 (K791, Kerr Database, Dumbarton Oaks); b) Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Museum no. 86.452 (K927, Kerr Database, Dumbarton Oaks); c) dog adorably scratching its ear, perhaps because of fleas (K7525, Kerr Database, Dumbarton Oaks); along with, for comparative reasons, d) Copan peccary skull, with three romping peccaries (an allusion to the source of the skull?, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, 92-49-20/C201).

 

Not a few dogs also have marks of their short, violent, and, yes, miserable lives in the tropics. Most have frayed ears, cut into three parts, either from dogfights or skin infections like ulcerative leishmaniasis, or perhaps to indicate the corrugated cartilage of the outer ear, the pinna, which helps to funnel sound (Figure 4). Thompson, by the adventurous reasoning for which he was known, felt the torn ear recalled the “syphilitic sores” of a Mexican dog deity (Thompson 1950:79). Dogs accompanied people out of Beringia, but breeds may only have diverged with the spread of agriculture and more settled population that found uses for dog as “meat…or for protection and companionship” (Manin et al. 2025:8). were clearly ubiquitous at Maya cities. Ceibal counts dogs among its most numerous remains of mammals, the deer being its only competitor (Sharpe et al. 2020:32). The variety of dog bones at Ceibal and elsewhere indicates “a number of different morphotypes, or perhaps even breeds, present,” including two Preclassic dogs that may have come from Highland Guatemala (Sharpe et al. 2020:32). A royal tomb from the Early Classic at El Zotz, Guatemala, contained small clappers of shell and dog canines, for which a minimum count (and probably an undercount) was about 30 animals butchered to make these musical instruments for the royal body (Newman et al. 2015:169, 177). Doubtless, of course, their flesh was consumed too, as was also true at Ceibal, although some of the evidence for this, such as cutmarks, is limited (Sharpe et al. 2020:32). The clappers contained 117 surviving canines, four for each animal, but the number of animals might have been greater if these can be distinguished by upper or lower jaw.

Figure 4. Dogs with spots, sagittal tufts, sparsely noted hair, and split ears: (a) detail, dog entreating deity (K555, Kerr Database, Dumbarton Oaks); and (b) detail, dog fighting a jaguar, Buenavista del Cayo, Mopan Valley Archaeological Project, L.27/189-9:267 (photograph: Bernadette Cap).

 

It is unsurprising that other breeds materialize, especially the Mexican hairless, the Xoloitzcuintle (Figure 5). The breed is typified by “sparse or absent hair coat along with a severe oligodontia [congential absence of certain dentition] and abnormally shaped teeth,” with genetic confirmation of its presence in Central Mexico by the period of Teotihuacan expansion, ca. 4th to 6th century CE, leading over the centuries to “a large and stable population” (Manin et al. 2018:129, 135). The Peruvian Hairless has an uncertain and perhaps tenuous genetic relation to the Mexican variety (Manin et al. 2018:134). More certain is the presence of this breed in a ritual deposit at the Highland Maya site of Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala; dating between 100 BCE to 250 CE, these come from several layers assignable to the Late Preclassic/Early Classic transition(Sharpe et al. 2021:230, 237). At Kaminaljuyu, several dog figurines appear also to have the distinctive sagittal tufting or “mohawk” of this dog (Sharpe et al. 2021:237–38, fig. 10). One such dog may also have been recovered in a Late Classic context at Copan, Honduras, another at Colha, Belize, with the added observation from Mary Pohl that such creatures were better for hunting, doing less damage to prey because of their deficient dentition (Collins 2002:156, citing Pohl; Sharpe et al. 2021:237). At Kaminaljuyu, several dog figurines appear also to have the distinctive sagittal tufting or “mohawk” of this dog, at least in some animals: many are utterly smooth (Sharpe et al. 2021:237–38, fig. 10). The data are still slim, but it seems likely that the breed appears relatively late in archaeological evidence, and with a likely early-to-mid first millennium introduction to the Maya region, possibly passing through Highland Guatemala and, in Mexico, from times and regions linked to Teotihuacan. At the least, this was a time of contact and flux, whatever the precise agents of transmission.

 

Figure 5. Two present-day Mexican hairless dogs, the Xoloitzcuintle; note the sagittal crest, smooth skin, and pronounced, internally folded ears (Creative Commons, left, Yessi Trex, right, Micayotl G.T.).

 

The Classic Maya may well have depicted and mentioned hairless dogs. A key morsel of evidence comes from Caracol, Belize, where a compelling case has been made by colleagues that several royal names contain the head of an animal with sagittal crest and three-part folded ears (Figure 6; Helmke and Vepretskii 2022:5–7; Vepretskii 2020). The proposed translation of this creature’s glyphs is tz’utz’, “pizote” or “coatimundi,” Nasua narica, an inquisitive, active creature with a long, expressive, striped tail, an elongated, agile, and flat-ended snout, plush fur, white-rimmed eyes, and flat forehead. There is logic to this reading. Tz’utz’ for “pizotes” is almost pan-Mayan, and the syllables with the hair-crested creature, when recorded on Late Classic period vases, undoubtedly include tz’u, tz’i, and, in one instance, an added hi (for “coati” reading, tz’utz’, see Grube and Nahm 1994:703, 708)

Figure 6. Animal with tufted crest on head, ragged ears, seemingly hairless snout and body: (a) name of Caracol Ruler 3, likely ya-AJAW-wa-TE’ K’I[H?]NICH-TZ’UTZ’I?, Caracol Stela 6:B21 C21 (photograph by Ian Graham); (b) animal named K’AHK’-NE’-la tz’u-tz’i (K1181, Kerr Database, Dumbarton Oaks); and (c) conversation between a creature tz’u-tz’i-hi and young deity, informing of “not much tribute,” mi ‘o-na pa-ta (K8076, Kerr Database, Dumbarton Oaks).

The challenge is that this does not resemble the creature consistently labeled with such glyphs. Coati are seldom shown in Maya imagery, and a lone example from Piedras Negras, Guatemala, appears as part of a veritable menagerie of lightly fired clay heads: there is a large toad or frog (all are flat-bottomed, solid, built up by additive modeling of clay slabs, their folds still visble at the base of the frog), a probable deer, and, in the middle, a creature with a long nose rounded at the end (Figure 7). At Piedras Negras, this is credibly a coati, with the less secure identification of a tapir. On the vases, in contrast, the creatures are almost certainly a dog, if a variety with scant hair, sagittal crest, wrinkled face, and plainly visible furrows of snout-skin. One breed fits: the Mexican hairless, known to be present in the Maya region at this time. It has similar, highly focused eruptions of hair, on head and top of the tail, pronounced wrinkles that corrugate the snout, and ear with deep pinnae or flap pouches. The last are more likely, because of its consistent appearance, to be specific to the breed, not the result of fighting or disease.

 

Figure 7. Animal heads in lightly fired clay, Structure C-11, Piedras Negras, Chacalhaaz in date (excavated in 2020 season, late 8th century CE , photograph by Jorge Pérez de Lara, Piedras Negras Archaeological Project).

 

What to make of its glyphic name? The first possibility, that it assigns “coati” to a dog, would parallel the Maya inclination to call a horse a “tapir” or “deer.” A novel application but, in this case, hard to understand: the Maya already had dogs, knew what they looked like, and the coati does not resemble a canine beyond the fact that it is a mammalian quadruped with a tail. Another, perhaps stronger view is the term may not consist of a single morpheme (i.e., tz’utz’), but a combination of them, somewhat like the lexical responses to novel animals in Egypt. The glyphs contain tz’i, which spells out “dog,” tz’i’, lacking only the final glottal. An alternative name might have been spelled out more fully, with attached hi syllable, by the animal that “speaks” ([Y]AL-ji-ya) of “not much tribute” (Figure 6c; see Thompson 1950:table 3, for a tzih from K’iche’ Maya, ca. 1722; perhaps the variant on the Classic Maya vase is dialectal). The first one, however, might refer to a “smooth dog,” tz’u[b]-tz’i’, with phonological elision of the /b/ during rapid speech and word-compounding (for tz’ub as root for “smooth, shiny, glistening,” see, in Ch’orti’, Hull 2016:460; cognate with tz’ab in Ch’ol, Hopkins, Josserand, and Cruz Guzmán 2010:245). A more speculative view might relate this to another, widespread term for “suck,” tz’u’, conceivably a comment on the malformed dentition and masticating behavior of the hairless dog (Hopkins, Josserand, and Cruz Guzmán 2010:250; Hull 2016:462; Laughlin 1974:104; Ringle n.d.:#3018; Ch’orti’, recorded by Charles Wisdom in the second quarter of the 20th century, refers to tz’up[b] as the act of “lapping,” Wisdom 1950:740).

The ancient Maya confronted no aardvarks, but they were beset with the problem of naming and showing unfamiliar beasts. There is a robust likelihood that one of them was the hairless dog, a “smooth” or “sucking canine,” which does not clearly come to the Maya Lowlands until the Classic period, and from foreign locales, either the Maya Highlands or central Mexico. Possibly, its ultimate origin was Western Mexico, where fat, small, hairless dogs provided delicious fare (Baus Czitrom 1998:47, chewing on a corn cob, 84, with deep wrinkles, but no Colima examples appear to have sagittal crests; Blanco et al. 2008:132; Butterwick 2004:65 67, pls. 21, 22; for wrinkles aplenty, LACMA, M.86.296.152). By Late Classic times, when most were displayed and cited in glyphs, they would have admixed with other breeds yet still, it appears, been managed as part of the Maya bestiary.

[Note 1]   The probable day name “Dog” on a late, Maya-Mexican hybrid bowl of alabaster shows the attributes of the hairless dog described below (split ear, sagittal hair), not the more familiar ook of Maya day names (K319). For the maker of this bowl, whatever their cultural or linguistic affiliation, the basic referent was a creature linked to parts of Mexico.

 

Acknowledgments

This essay coalesced during my appointment as the Inaugural Barbara Tedlock Fellow at the School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, where its President, Morris Foster, kindly hosted me. As I wrote this, to set the mood, caged dogs howled in a nearby residence a short distance away. My thanks go to Sarah Newman for discussions about dogs and to Sergey Vepretskii for sharing a powerpoint from his 2020 presentation. Other postings in the “Maya Creatures” series include Maya Musk, Dragons, Mosquitoes, Teeth, Foxes, Dogs, and Woodpeckers.

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Identifying Regional Place Names, Part I: Maayha’

David Stuart

by David Stuart, The University of Texas at Austin

Today the word “Maya” stands as a broad cultural and archaeological label, but this wasn’t always the case. Before the late nineteenth century it referred only to the region, language and people of northern Yucatán, and even then it had already had a complex history and unwieldy range of meanings. In early sixteenth century sources, Maya was first and foremost a regional place name, corresponding more or less to  the Yucatán peninsula; it was from this use that other meanings and senses derived.

In my upcoming book, The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya (Princeton University Press, 2026), I tentatively posit that there is an ancient hieroglyph which may correspond to the place name Maya. I had no space in the book to present any in-depth discussion of this idea, so here I would like to give an overview of my reasoning, along with some related observations about ancient Maya names of the earth, and its animated conception as a caiman or crocodile. This is the first part of several anticipated posts that examine Classic Maya place names on a regional scale, looking beyond just individual communities and polities.

Maya as a Place

Early writers were clear in their opinion that Maya originated as a geographical term. The linguist and philologist Carl Hermann Berendt wrote in 1878 that “the Maya language proper (mayathan) is spoken through the whole peninsula of Yucatan, the ancient name of which was Maya” (quoted in Tozzer 1921:5). Similarly, Daniel G. Brinton (1882:11) stated that Maya was “the proper name of the northern portion of the peninsula.” Earlier, the sixteenth-century Calepino Maya de Motul included the entry “Maya. nombre proprio desta tierra” which not be more direct (Ciuded Ruiz 2004:384). Landa’s first mention of the word comes in his account of the wreck of the ill-fated Valdivia expedition of 1511: …llegaron a la costa de Yucatan a una provincia que llamavan de la Maya, de la qual la lengua de Yucatan se llama Mayathan, que quiere dezir lengua de Maya (“they arrived at a province which was called Maya, from which the language of Yucatan takes its name, maya than, which means ‘the language of maya”) (Tozzer 1941:7). Tozzer also noted that an earlier appearance of the word is in a manuscript written by Bartholeme Colón in 1505 or 1506, where he noted that the trading canoe encountered by his brother in 1502 “came from a certain province called Maiam or Yucatam.”

Figure 1. Entry for “maya” in the Calepino Maya de Motul, sixteenth century manuscript. From photographic facsimile in author’s collection.

Other early vocabularies also emphasize Maya as a designation for “la tierra,” the general region. The colonial Diccionario de San Francisco (Michelson 1976) lists several examples where this comes into play:

maya ci, vino de esta tierra
maya kuch, hilo de la tierra
maya than, lengua vulgar o comun de esta tierra (Yucatán)
maya ulum, gallina de esta tierra

And again in the Motul (Ciudad Real 2001:384) we find:

maya vinic, hombre de Yucatan, indio
maya xiblal, varón de Yucatan
maya chhuplal, muger de Yucatan

Notice still how the emphasis always is on maya as a place and region. The Motul entry ah mayaa, “hombre o muger desta tierra de Yucatan,” echoes this point, as it conforms to a standard title of place-origin using the prefix ah– before a place name, as in ah campech, “person from Campeche” (Ciudad Real 2002:48). In the early colonial period, Maya was never really used as a collective term of affiliation or ethnic self-identity among indigenous communities (Restall 2004), but this soon changed, probably though usages such as maya uinicob, “Maya people.” And Maya as a regional name was quickly supplanted by “Yucatán,” preferred by the Spanish and again imposed from outside. By the end of the nineteenth century, the inherent bias in both archaeology and ethnohistory toward Yucatecan sources — all better published and more accessible — paved the way for Maya to converted yet again, into the wide cultural label we are familiar with today, even applied to speakers of non-Yucatecan languages.

Brinton (1895:10) may have been the first scholar to consider “Mayan” as a broad term for the various related languages, writing “I employ the adjective ‘Mayan’ when speaking of the whole stock, and confine ‘Maya,’ in an adjectival sense, to that branch of the stock resident in Yucatan.” At the same time, in an archaeological context, we can trace a similar extended usage to John T. Goodman, who in 1897 wrote in the opening “Explanatory Note” of his The Archaic Maya Inscriptions:

The adjectival term Maya, instead of Mayan at times, is employed throughout this book. The nice distinction, which it is sought bring into vogue, of applying the former only to matters pertaining to Yucatan and using the latter only with regard to affairs relating to the race in general, appears to me ill-advised and liable to result in confusion. I think it would be better to distinguish the separate developments by the terms Yucatec, Tzendal, Chiapec, Cakchiquel, and so on, as far as they can be thus intelligibly designated, retaining the adjective Maya alone as the simpler form, and employing it solely in a generic sense. Hence, not knowing what designation to give the authors of the inscriptions, I have simply applied the broad racial appellation to them, and used the single term Maya adjectively throughout (Goodman 1897).

Today “Maya” remains an unwieldy collective term for many diverse groups who speak one of the thirty or more Mayan languages. By the turn of the 20th century, it also came to be used by archaeologists to refer to the ancient culture more broadly, filling a need to describe the ruins, art and hieroglyphs in some unified way. By 1899 we read of “Maya art” and “Maya civilization” in the pages of A Glimpse at Guatemala, penned by Anne Cary Maudslay, wife of Alfred Maudslay (who, incidentally, had collaborated closely with Goodman, so it may reflect the latter’s influence). In this way, what had once been a linguistic label used to describe part of the “Maya language” or the “Maya-Quiche stock,” quickly came to be applied to the wide swath of archaeological remains, as those came into better focus and systematic study. Within a few years the modern senses of “Maya,” referring to people both ancient and modern, was well established, at least among linguists, anthropologists and archaeologists.

Brinton (1882:11) also wrote that: “No single province bore [the name Maya] at the date of the Conquest, and probably it had been handed down as a generic term from the period, about a century before, when this whole district was united under one government.” Here Brinton alludes to the appearance of Maya in the specific locational name of Mayapan, and indeed the two are related. Restall (2004) suggests Mayapan was the actual origin of the label Maya. His assertion is part of a broader and very nuanced treatment of shifting labels of ethnicity in Yucatan, from the Conquest up to the present day. In the complexities and misunderstandings of the long colonial era, this was quickly overextended by the authorities as an ethnic and a linguistic label, and it continued to be extended in new ways through the early twentieth century, as mentioned earlier. In this way, as Restall rightly points out,, the word Maya came to be invented as an ethnic identity, a designation for a broad cetagory people in the early colonial world.  This being said, it does seem that Maya a place name at the time of the Spanish invasion, referring to the area (or a part) that would also come to be called Yucatan, encompassing those territories and kuchkabaloob that were eventually under the confederacy at Mayapan.

Bishop Diego de Landa makes clear that Mayapan was a Yucatec-Nahua hybrid term, in stating that it means “el pendón de la Maya.”  This comes from the locative suffix –pan (“place” or “surface”) being analyzed as the Nahuatl noun pantli, “banner.” It is also homophonous with the noun pantli meaning “wall” or “enclosure” (as in tzompantli, a “wall of skulls”). In fact, in Nahuatl writing  the –pan locative suffix on place names can be represented with the glyph representing a masonry wall, based on the near identical sound. Given the unique fortification surrounding Mayapan, it is tempting to think that the place name is indeed hybrid, meaning “the Wall of Maya.” We should also keep in mind that Mayapan could more simply be a Nahuatl place name that incorporates the Maya one: Maya-pan, “place of Maya,” as a name of the region’s central capital. Either way, the specific name would allude to the region, given the city’s historical founding as a confederacy of several ruling lineages throughout Yucatán. In an alternative scenario noted above, it is also plausible that word Maya somehow grew out of the place name Mayapan and its old political oder (Restall 2004, Restall and Gabbert 2017), raising a complex chicken-and-egg question about which came first.

Just how far back can we trace “Maya” as a geographical or cultural term? Historically, notions of self-identity tended to hinge on localized towns, communities and lineages, at least as far back as the Classic period. The broken and balkanized political landscape of the Late Classic can be seen as the clearest evidence of this. The Classic Mayan word kabch’een (“earth-cave”) referred to basic organizing concept of a territory, or what we have long called a “city state” or “polity.” Even so, there are strong indications that the Maya of the Classic period also saw themselves as part of a larger cultural whole, holding a remarkable degree of cultural unity despite a long history of geopolitical fragmentation and reshuffling. Elites of the Classic period were aware of their common language (or related languages) in relation to other Mesoamerican peoples with whom they were at time strongly attached as well. And they also had a strong sense of mutual history, with cross-referenced records of dynastic events and royal lives. In this light, did the ancient Maya define themselves or their region more broadly in any way, using recognizable terms or place names?

 A “Maya” Hieroglyph?

The Classic inscriptions are full of place names, always in reference either to political centers or communities, ritual or cosmological centers, or even to particular buildings (Stuart and Houston 1996, Tokovinine 2013, Stuart 1998). There are also occasional references to numbered “divisions” (tzuk) and groups of allied centers that seem to be fairly large in their geographical scope (Beliaev 2000; Martin 2020). And here I would include also the wide-ranging directional title kaloomte’, associated with important rulers located in the four cardinal points (xaman kaloomte’. “the north kaloomte’). However we interpret it, the pattern reveals more than anything else how the Classic Maya understood their larger region as a whole, even if politically divided and balkanized at any given time. This term reiterates how the political organization of the Maya lowlands was seen as existing in a cosmological framework or scheme — an idea that has a long history in Maya studies (Marcus 1973, 1976, Martin 2020). What we have lacked in the ancient texts are any larger geographical terms, encompassing such wider regions or areas.

Figure 2. The basal toponymic register from Yaxchilan, Stela 7. Note the earth-caiman with the floral eye emanations. Drawing by Ian Graham.

As part of our identification of Classic place names, Houston and I discussed the importance of what we called “toponymic registers” in iconography, usually shown under the feet of a standing figure or captive, marking a location using an emblematic form of Maya writing (Stuart and Houston 1994:57-68). One such example appears on Yaxchilan, Stela 7’s base, as a complex, multilayered placename (Figure 2). The central element of the design is the head of a caiman or crocodile (ahiin), identifiable by its distinctive cross-banded eye and its upturned snout. In its forehead is the sign HA’, “water,” showing a cleft at its top. Above this, just visible, is the profile view of a solar cartouche, for K’IN. The components here suggest a hieroglyphic combination shown in a highly elaborated form, an example of emblematic writing, approaches and even merging with iconographic design. The cleft atop the head of the caiman and the water sign may suggest some subtle reference to the broader name pa’chan, “cleft-sky,” the name of the city and the polity (Martin 2004) (clearer examples of the Pa’chan glyph are found on the basal registers of Stela 4 and Step 3 of HS 3). Out of the eye of the caiman emerge two floral elements or tendrils, symmetrically placed to either side. These resemble  leaves or flowers, each forming a cartouche in which we see other designs incorporating animal-like forms, facing outward from the center. The animal on the left looks to be a rodent of some sort, with other specific components that are missing or damaged. The cartouche to the right is more complete. Details visible on the Maler photograph reveal it is a full-figure deer with a HA’ sign below, clearly glyphic (see Figure 6c, below). The deer is shown in a hunched, somewhat awkward pose, almost as if seated, with its front leg extended outward. It is difficult to know what to make of this glyph that is incorporated into the larger toponymic register, but the HA’ sign certainly points to it being a place name.

Figure 3. Toponymic paintings on east wall of Río Azul, Tomb 1. Drawing by Mary Jane Acuña.

In the Early Classic paintings of Río Azul, Tomb 1, we see another grouping of some of these same K’IN and AHIIN elements, bridging iconography and script (Figure 3) (Acuña 2015). Opposite this, to the left of the central text, is an elaborate WITZ (“hill”) head, placed above another head that is the animate sign for CH’EEN (“cave”). All of these elements are hieroglyphs, not iconography, with K’IN and AHIIN-na providing an interesting connection to Stela 7. We will explore this combination in more detail in Part II of this study, but suffice it to say for now that it is probably spelling the name K’inich Ahiin, “Solar Caiman,” which I take to be the proper name of the Maya earth-caiman, cited in several other artworks and inscriptions. The juxtaposition here of the name K’inich Ahiin with witz and ch’een strongly suggests a toponymic design emphasizing a broad conception of place. Their purpose here is maybe to provide the setting for the birth event recording in the central text, probably in reference to the resurrection of the deceased tomb occupant as the reborn sun (much like the theme conveyed in the iconography of Palenque’s famous sarcophagus of K’inich Janab Pakal).

Also part of the glyphic composition in Tomb 1 is our glyph representing a small deer in combination with HA’, identical to the distinctive combination of signs inserted into the composition on Stela 7 at Yaxchilan (see Figure 3, upper left). Why would it be here too? We should probably understand it to be another place name, especially considering the HA’ sign, meaning “water,” but also because of the stacked WITZ and CH’EEN signs on which it is perched (there is another hieroglyph shown here as well, showing a skull-like head, which is probably toponymic as well, given the context). The appearance of the deer-HA’ here at Río Azul and at distant Yaxchilan is curious, for it can hardly be a localized reference. Its proximity to the Solar Caiman in both places suggests that it  may even be cosmological in some sense.

Figure 4. Painted vase from Tayasal, Petén, Guatemala. Note “deer-HA'” hieroglyph (placed here in final position). Photo and drawing by Sven Gronemeyer.

The deer-HA’ combination occurs also on a ceramic vase with four painted glyphs, reportedly from the site of Tayasal, Peten (Figure 4). Gronemeyer (2010) first published this vessel, and in his report he also analyzed the deer-HA’ glyph as a place name, likewise citing its appearance in the Río Azul tomb. The other glyphs on the Tayasal vase include  IK’-a’, for the place name Ik’a’ (Gronemeyer 2010; Marc Zender, personal communication, 2025). This is probably a place reference to the site of Tayasal, or to the great lake itself, as “Windy Waters” (Tokovinine and Zender 2012). The two glyphs that follow are the heads for K’IN and AHIIN, which I take to be another instance the name of the Solar Caiman, K’inich Ajaw, and therefore identical to the name presented in Tomb 1. The deer and the HA‘ are very clear in the next glyph, emphasizing again the animal’s hunched pose and oversized head (by now it seems likely that this cannot be an alternate form of CHIJ, “deer,” given its distinctive form). The glyphic composition on the vase is playful, with the deer shown “emerging” from the HA’ sign and presenting its foreleg. This is the position of a fawn when born, emerging from the birth canal (Dr. Ann Stuart DVM, personal communication, 2023). The somewhat awkward poses we see in all of the examples might therefore be seen as artistic allusions to a young or newborn deer (see Figure 6, below).

What does all of this have to do with the word Maya? It strikes me that the combination of the “young deer” and the HA’ sign, clearly toponymic, might well be read as MAAY?-HA’. As background, I should note that MAAY or MAY is already a well-known logogram in the script, a sign that represents a deer’s leg and hoof (a reading first suggested by Linda Schele) (Figure 5).  This is because maay is the word for “hoof” used today in Yucatán, usually in reference to a horse’s hoof, but also to the foot of a deer. In the glyphs, the hoof sign is used most commonly to spelling the word maayij, “sacrifice, offering” in spellings such as MAAY-ji or MAAY-yi-ji (Bíró 2012; Stuart 2005a:154). In another role, the deer leg can spell the nearly homophonous noun may, “tobacco” (MAAY-ya or MAY-ya) (Loughmiller-Cardinal and Zagorevskii 2016, Stuart 2005b), although there was once probably a phonetic distinction between these words, with “hoof” having a long vowel (maay), as we will see. The word is perhaps also reflected in one Ch’ol term for “deer,” chijmay, combined with the older and far more widespread term, chij (Becerra 1937, Schumann 1973).

Figure 5. The logogram MAAY or MAY, representing a deer’s hoof. (a) example from Palenque, Temple 18 jamb panel, (b) in spelling MAAY-yi-ji, for mayij, “sacrifice,” (c) in spelling MAAY-ya, for may, “tobacco snuff.” Photo by D. Stuart, drawings by L. Schele (a) and D. Stuart (b).

Importantly, in Yucatec, maay is not only “hoof,” but also “ciervo joven” (young deer) or “venadillo pequeño criado in casa” (small deer raised in household) (Barrera Vásquez 1980). Another entry notes that it is a “nombre ritual de venado.” As Marc Zender points out (personal communication, 2025), the Motul entry for Maya is careful to note “acento en el primero” indicating that the first syllable must have had a long vowel, as in maay or màay,  This agrees with the word for “hoof” or “young deer,” also màay. And it seems likely that “hoof” was extended here to mean “young deer,” due to the newborn’s oversized legs and feet.  Considering this, I tentatively propose that the glyphic representations of the young fawn with its prominent foreleg might be a more elaborate MAY or MAAY, with this meaning (see Figure 6). The glyph would then read as MAAY?-HA’, “Young-Deer Water,” as a place name, corresponding nicely with the historic name màaya’, and revealing its actual etymology.

Figure 6. Three examples of the possible MAAY?-HA’ glyph. (a) Río Azul, Tomb 1, (b) Tayasal vase, (c) Yaxchilan, Stela 7. Drawings by Mary Jane Acuña (a) and David Stuart (b, c)

Perhaps for this reason, the Classic glyph Maayha’ appears at Yaxchilan and Río Azul embedded in icons and glyphs that refer to the earth and regional spaces, and on a scale wider than we are accustomed. At Río Azul it serves to “label” the landscape represented by the glyphs witz and ch’en, the “hills and caves.” On the Tayasal vase, it is tempting to see the same name Maayha’ with a string of other place glyphs, including that noted by Gronemeyer (2010) (Figure 7). These run from specific to regional: Ik’a / K’inich An / Maayha’, “Ik’a, (of the) Solar Caiman (Earth), (of the) Maya (region).” This may label the vessel itself in a playful way as a watery “place” – a water container that was a figurative, hand-held “Ik’a'” within a wider landscape.

Figure 7. A possible expanded toponym on the Tayasal vase. Drawing by Sven Gronemeyer.

Conclusion

Here we have examined a rare toponym that appears at different sites and at a considerable distance from each other, across the entirety of the present-day Petén region. At Yaxchilan and Rio Azul its  appears within complex glyphic designs that are locational and cosmological, occurring in direct association with the name of the animate earth, K’inich Ahiin. While the glyph is rare, and the proposal remains highly tentative, I suggest that the toponymic glyph in question might read MAAY?-HA’, raising the intriguing possibility that during the Classic period Maayha’ or Maaya’ was an ancient name for a large expanse within the peninsula or region.  I will present further perspectives and evidence on this in Part II, focusing on the possible name of the animate earth-caiman, K’inich Ahiin, and its relations. If it is indeed the glyph that corresponds to the historical place name Maaya’, we are left wondering what its scope could have been in ancient times: was it the proper name beyond just the northern lowlands of the peninsula? What was its extent? It is impossible to know, but it would seem a wide-ranging reference nonetheless.

Finally, returning to the basal register on Stela 7 at Yaxchilan (Figure 2), we see how the possible MAAY?-HA’ glyph appears opposite a corresponding icon at left, also in a floral cartouche, showing what looks to be a full-figure rodent. This animal appears in other contexts at Yaxchilan, which we will examine in more detail in Part II of this study. Here I will only mention that this is a mouse or rat, or ch’oh in Classic Mayan (the head of the animal basis of the syllable ch’o and the logogram CH’OH, “mouse, rat.”). Given that it also is likely to be a hieroglyphic form, I have to wonder if the rodent may open the door to reconstructing another broad, regional place name of Classic times, and perhaps one that survived historically as another well-known linguistic label in use today. There is much more to say on this and other related points. For now I would only posit that the MAAY?-HA’ hieroglyph was indeed the Classic-period counterpart to the regional place name Maaya’ known from Late Postclassic and contact-period Yucatán, where it was “el nombre propio desta tierra.”

Note: “Mayab” is sometimes thought to be an alternate variant of the place name Maya, or maybe even its original form. This seems doubtful, however, and it is more likely to be a recent word, or even a Spanish corruption, perhaps like Columbus’s “Maiam” (see Briton 1882:13).

Acknowledgements. I thank Tom Garrison, Stephen Houston, Danny Law, Katherine Schumann, and Marc Zender for their valuable feedback as these old ideas have churned-up again in recent weeks. Their encouragement has prompted this revisit of what was a working idea, now with a bit more evidence. The MAAY?-HA’ reading goes back nearly a k’atun, to a time when I remained hesitant to propose the idea without a deeper investigation of its contexts. I also thank Stephen Houston for sharing images of a cast of the deer glyph on Yaxchilan, Stela 7, which clarified several details.

SOURCES CITED

Acuña, Mary Jane. 2015. Royal Death, Tombs, and Cosmic Landscapes: Early Classic Tomb Murals from Rio Azul, Guatemala. In Maya Archaeology 3, edited by C. Golden, S. Houston, and J. Skidmore, pp. 168–185. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco.

Barrera Vásquez, Alfredo. 1980. Diccionario Cordemex, Maya-Español, Español-Maya. Ediciones Cordemex, Mérida.

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