SO THE MAYA WERE CALLED

Illustration by Jorge Luna

The names of the ancient Maya depended in large part on the geographic locations of their villages, which were disseminated throughout Guatemala, the western region of Honduras, the north of El Salvador, all of Belize and, in Mexico, in the states of Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Yucatan.

    One of these villages, located in the western part of the state of Yucatan, belonged to a people called the Ah Camul. The members of this group were known to have had four different names during four distinct phases of their lives.

    Parents took their newborn children to the paal kaba or priest, who would make a child's horoscope and give it the first name. For boys the paal kaba invariably began with the prefix ah; for girls he used Ix. These prefixes were appended to the names of mammals, reptiles or birds.

    To make it clearer, imagine a boy and a girl with the Maya names Ah Balam (jaguar) and Ix Cuat (snake), respectively. After puberty, the girls and boys took their father's last name. If the father was named Chel, they would change their names to Ah Balam Chel and Ix Cuat Chel, respectively. While the Maya word, which literally meant "last name," is forgotten, we do know that after a ceremony, which can be compared to a baptism, the Maya took on their fathers' last name. Afterward, a group of boys and girls were sprinkled with rainwater by the priests and invited to burn incense and corn in an urn. At the end of the ritual, the urn was taken far from the village to forever expel bad spirits. From this moment on, the adolescents were considered ready for marriage.

    The peninsular Maya married young, sometimes at twelve or thirteen years of age. At the end of nuptials, the men's and women's names were modified a third time, also by the paal kaba. This substituted the previous name, and was composed of the prefix Na, plus the last name of the mother and that of the father. Therefore, if the mother of Ah Balam Chel or Ix Cuat Chel had the last name Chan, they would change their names to Na Balam Chan Chel and Na Cuat Chan Chel, respectively.

    The Ah Canul used nicknames. Even powerful men were better known by their sobriquets than by their given names. For example Ah Zuitok Tutul Xui, founder of Uxmal, an important Maya city in Yucatan, was called Hun Uitzil Chac, "the only mountain of Chac," god of rain. The Calkini Codex, one of the few remaining indigenous manuscripts, mentions a few more. Among the six listed are Ah Pach Uitz, "the man that lived behind the hill"; Ah Tupp Kabal, "the man that made noises like an explosion"; Ah Na Itza, "the man of the house of the Itza's (a house that ruled Chichen Itza)"; Ah Kom Tzohom, "something red" and Ah Xochil Ich, "eye or face of an owl."