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The 'toponymy of ''Mexico''' entails the origin, history, and use of the name ''Mexico'', which dates back to 14th century Mesoamerica. Mexico was named after its capital, Mexico City, whose original name was Mexico-Tenochtitlan, in reference to the name of the Nahua Aztec tribe, the Mexica. The Nahuatl word ''Mexiko'' or ''Mexihko'' () is composed of the root ''Mexi'' and the suffix ''-co'' that means "place" or "city." The full name of the city, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, means "the place of the Mexica in the cactus-stone," in reference to the image of the eagle perched on a cactus that grew from a stone, in the middle of Lake Texcoco. This image is represented in Mexico's coat of arms and flag.
The official name of the country is the ''United Mexican States'' (Spanish: ''Estados Unidos Mexicanos''), since it is a federation of thirty-one states. The official name was first used in the Mexican constitution of 1824, and was retained in the constitutions of 1857 and 1917. Informally, ''Mexico'' is used along with ''Mexican Republic'' (''República Mexicana'').

Contents

The names of the country

Etymology

Phonetic evolution

Normative spelling in Spanish

References

See also

The names of the country

When the Spanish conquistadors sieged México-Tenochtitlan, it was almost completely destroyed in 1521. It was rebuilt during the following three years, after which it was designated as a municipality and capital of the vice-royalty of New Spain. In 1524 the municipality of Mexico City was established, known as ''México Tenustitlan'', and as of 1585 became officially known simply ''Ciudad de México''.^[1] Mexico was used only to refer to the city, and later to a province within New Spain. It was not until the independence of the vice-royalty of New Spain that ''Mexico'' became the traditional and conventional short-form name of the country.
During the the 1810s, different insurgent groups advocated and fought for the independence of the vice-royalty of New Spain. This vast territory was comprised of different ''intendencias'' and provinces, successors of the kingdoms and captaincies general administered by the vice-regal capital of Mexico City. The Supreme Congress of the revolutionary forces that met at Apatzingán (in today's state of Michoacán) drafted the first constitution,^[2] in 1814 whereby the name ''América Mexicana'' (''Mexican America'') was chosen for the country. The head of insurgent forces, however, was defeated by the royalist forces, and the constitution was never enacted.
Servando Teresa de Mier, in a treatise written in 1820 in which he discussed the reasons why New Spain was the only overseas territory of Spain that had not obtained its independence, chose the term ''Anáhuac'' to refer to the country.^[3] This term, in Náhuatl, was used by the Mexica to refer to the territory they dominated. According to some linguists, it means "near or surrounded by waters", probably in reference to Lake Texcoco,^[4] even though it was also the word used to refer to the world or the terrestrial universe (as when used in the phrase ''Cem Anáhuac'', "the entire earth") and in which their capital, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, was at the centre and at the same time at the centre of the waters, being built on an island in a lake.^[5]
In September 1821, the independence of Mexico was finally recognized by Spain, achieved through an alliance of royalist and revolutionary forces. The former tried to preserve the ''status quo'' of the vice-royalty, menaced by the liberal reforms taking place in Spain, through the establishment of an autonomous constitutional monarchy under the King of Spain^[6] (thus attempting to create a commonwealth) or any other member of a European royal house should the first decline. The name chosen for the country was ''Imperio Mexicano'' (''Mexican Empire''). The empire collapsed in 1823, and the republican forces drafted a constitution the following year whereby a federal form of government was instituted. In the 1824 constitution, which gave rise to the Mexican federation, ''Estados Unidos Mexicanos'' (also ''Estados-unidos mexicanos'') – ''Mexican United States'' or, more properly, ''United Mexican States'' – was adopted as the country's official name.^[7][8] The constitution of 1857 used the term ''República Mexicana'' (''Mexican Republic'') interchangeably with ''Estados Unidos Mexicanos'';^[9] the current constitution, promulgated in 1917, only uses the latter^[10] and ''United Mexican States'' is the normative English translation.^[11] The name ''Mexican Empire'' was briefly revived from 1863 to 1867 by the conservative government that instituted a constitutional monarchy for a second time under Maximilian of Habsburg.

Etymology

According to one legend, it was Huitzilopochtli, the war deity and patron of the Mexica who gave them their name. The most probable interpretation is that the name comes from ''Mexitl'' or ''Mexi'' a secret name for the deity,^[12] in which case Mexico means "Place where Mexi Huitzilopochtli lives". Another hypothesis suggests that the word ''Mexiko'' derives from the ''metztli'' ("moon"), ''xictli'' ("navel", "center" or "son"), and the suffix ''-co'' (place), thus it means "Place at the center of the moon" or "Place at the center of the Lake Moon," in reference to Lake Texcoco. The system of interconnected lakes, of which Texcoco was at the center, had the form of a rabbit, the same image that the Aztecs saw in the moon. Tenochtitlan was located at the center (or navel) of the lake (or rabbit/moon).^[13] Still another hypothesis suggests that it is derived from ''Mectli,'' the goddess of maguey.^[14]
Nahua toponymy is full of mysticism, as it was pointed out by the Spanish missionary Bernardino de Sahagún. In his mystic interpretation, Mexico could mean "Center of the World," and, in fact, it was represented as such in various codices, as a place where all water currents that cross the ''Anahuac'' ("world" or "land surrounded by seas") converge (see image on the Mendoza codex).

Phonetic evolution

The Nahuatl word ''Mexihco'', pronounced , was transliterated as "Mexico" using Medieval Spanish phonetics, in which the ''x'' represented the voiceless postalveolar fricative (, the equivalent of the English ''sh'' in "shop"). ''J'' represented the voiced postalveolar fricative (, like the English ''s'' in "vision"). However, by the end of the fifteenth century ''j'' had evolved into a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant as well, and thus both ''x'' and ''j'' represented the same sound (). During the sixteenth century this sound evolved into a voiceless velar fricative (, like the ''ch'' in German "loch"), and ''México'' began to be pronounced as ['mexiko].^[15]
Given that both ''x'' and ''j'' represented the same new sound (), and in lack of a spelling convention, many words that originally had the sound, began to be written with ''j'' (e.g. it wasn't uncommon to find both ''exército'' and ''ejército'' used during the same time period, even though that due to historicity, the correct spelling would have been ''exército''). The ''Real Academia Española'', the institution in charge of regulating the Spanish language, was established in 1713, and its members agreed to simplify spelling, and set ''j'' to represent regardless of the original spelling of the word, and ''x'' to represent . (The ''ph'' phoneme suffered a similar fate, in that it was simplified as ''f'' in all words, e.g. ''philosophía'' became ''filosofía''.)
Nevertheless, there was ambivalence in the application of this rule in toponyms: ''México'' was used alongside ''Méjico'', ''Texas'' and ''Tejas'', ''Oaxaca'' and ''Oajaca'', ''Xalixco'' and ''Jalisco'', etc., as well as in proper and last names: ''Xavier'' and ''Javier'', ''Ximénez'' and ''Jiménez'' are spelling variants still used today.
In present-day Spanish, ''Mexico'' is pronounced or , the latter pronunciation used mostly in dialects of the Caribbean and some places in South America where has become a voiceless glottal fricative (). In English, however, the ''x'' does not represent either the original sound or the modern sound , but the double consonant /ks/; thus Mexico is pronounced as .

Normative spelling in Spanish

''México'' is the predominant Spanish spelling variant used throughout Latin America, and universally used in Mexican Spanish, whereas ''Méjico'' is used infrequently in Spain and Argentina. During the 1990s, the ''Real Academia Española'' recommended that ''México'' be the normative spelling of the word and all its derivatives, even though this spelling does not match the pronunciation of the word.^[16] Since then, the majority of publications adhere to the new normative in all Spanish-speaking countries even though the disused variant can still be found.^[17] The same rule applies to all Spanish toponyms in the Americas, and on some occasions in the Iberian Peninsula, even though in most co-official or regional languages of Spain (Asturian and Catalan), the ''x'' is still pronounced as .

References

1. Historia de la Ciudad de México Gobierno del Distrito Federal
2. Decreto Constitucional para la Libertad de la América Mexicana
3. ¿Puede ser libre la Nueva España?
4. Universidad Anáhuac
5. A Nahuatl Interpretation of the Conquest
6. As stipulated in the Treaties of Córdoba
7. ''Constitución federal de los Estados Unidos mexicanos'' (1824)
8. Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States (1824) (original scans with English text): The Texas Constitutions Digitization Project, University of Texas at Austin; also see project bibliography
9. ''Constitución Federal de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos'' (1857)
10. ''Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos'' (1917)
11. 1917 Constitution of Mexico, Official Site of the Mexican Government (English)
12. AGUILAR-MORENO M (2006) ''Handbook to Life in the Aztec World'' Facts of Life, Inc: New York, USA, p. 19
13. Nombre del Estado de México Gobierno del Estado de México
14. ''idem''
15. Evolution of the pronunciation of ''x'' Real Academia Española
16. Real Academia Española Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas
17. "Mexico" ''Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary''

See also

★ Mexican state name etymologies