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.”

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 20^th 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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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