The name Mexico means Navel of the Moon

Dorian 7 min read

Share with:

The name Mexico means Navel of the Moon – Curiosities and Incredible Facts You Did Not Know in Dorian’s Secrets: The Eternal Youth Magazine!

Todos los Artículos están Disponibles en Español
Visita nuestra Sección de “Sabías Que…” en Idioma Español Aquí!

The name Mexico means Navel of the Moon – Dorian’s Secrets

Did you know that…

The name Mexico means Navel of the Moon. In Nahuatl metztli (moon) and xictli (navel). The natives pronounced them meshico and the Spanish wrote them Mexico.

Nahuatl:

Nahuatl (autoglotónimo: nāhuatlahtōlli) or Mexican is a Yuto-Nahua macrolanguage that is spoken in Mexico. It has existed at least since the 5th century, although, when southern Yuto-Nahua and Proto-Nahua became different (c. 3rd century), it became possible to speak Nahuatl in the strict sense.

Currently, the Mexican language is the autochthonous language of Mexico with the largest number of speakers, with about three million, the majority bilingual with Spanish or trilingual with English.

With the expansion of the Coyotlatelca culture during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. In Mesoamerica, the language began its rapid spread through the Neovolcanic Axis and spread along the Pacific coast. It was thus that it gave rise to the pochuteco and another branch in the geographic region of Veracruz that would later give rise to the Nahuat of Central America.

Little by little, Nahuatl began to impose itself on other Mesoamerican languages until it became the lingua franca for much of the area; in a first stage it spread in the central area of Mexico thanks to the Tepanecas; later, in a second stage, which took place from the 15th century on, this language spread in all the territories dominated by the Mexica Empire.

During the centuries preceding the Spanish and Tlaxcala conquest of the Mexica Empire, the Mexica had incorporated much of central Mexico into their dominions. The imperial influence turned the variant of Nahuatl spoken by the inhabitants of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, capital of the empire, into a language of prestige in the Mesoamerican region.

The name Mexico means Navel of the Moon

After the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico, the grammar of Nahuatl, which until then had no Latin spelling, was systematized. The Spanish wrote many chronicles, grammars, poetic works, and administrative documents in Nahuatl during the 16th and 17th centuries.

This early written practice, generally based on the Tenochtitlan variant, has been called classical Nahuatl and is one of the most documented and studied languages in America. Due to the popularity of the language and, in part, territorial expansion due to the conquerors, King Felipe II established Nahuatl as the official language of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

Currently, various variants of Nahuatl are found in scattered communities, mainly in rural areas of central Mexico and along the Gulf Coast. There are considerable differences between variants and some are not mutually intelligible. The Huasteca region concentrates a large part of Mexican speakers.

All dialect varieties have had different degrees of influence from Spanish. None of the contemporary variants is identical to classical Nahuatl, although the central variants, spoken around the Valley of Mexico, are more closely related to it than those in the periphery.

Dialectological evidence indicates that modern variants do not appear to have evolved from the variant spoken in Tenochtitlan, but from regional variants already existing before the codification of the so-called classical Nahuatl. Following this idea, it has been proposed that the language of the Mexican capital was a Koine resulting from contact between speakers of different variants.

Nahuatl is spoken in 15 of the 31 states of the Mexican Republic: Puebla, Hidalgo, Veracruz, San Luis Potosí, Oaxaca, Colima, Durango, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacán, Morelos, Nayarit, Tabasco, Tlaxcala, State of Mexico and Mexico City.