Everything about Toponymy Of Mexico totally explained
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 ([meːʃiʔko]) 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 among the stone-cactuses," 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's a
federation of thirty-one states. The official name was first used in the
Constitution of 1824, and was retained in the
constitutions of 1857 and 1917. Informally, "Mexico" is used along with "Mexican Republic" (
República Mexicana).
The names of the country
When the
Spanish conquistadors
besieged México-Tenochtitlan in 1521, it was almost completely destroyed. 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. Mexico was used only to refer to the city, and later to a province within New Spain. It wasn't 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
1810s, different insurgent groups advocated and fought for the independence of the vice-royalty of New Spain. This vast territory was composed of different
intendencias and provinces, successors of the kingdoms and captaincies general administered by the vice-regal capital of
Mexico City. In 1813, the deputies of the
Congress of Anahuac (Congress of Chilpancingo) signed the document
Acta Solemne de la Declaración de Independencia de la América Septentrional, "
(Solemn Act of the Declaration of Independence of Northern America". In 1814 the Supreme Congress of the revolutionary forces that met at
Apatzingán (in today's state of
Michoacán) drafted
the first constitution, in 1814 whereby the name
América Mexicana ("Mexican America") was chosen for the country. The head of the 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 hadn't yet secured its independence, chose the term
Anáhuac to refer to the country. This term, in
Nahuatl, 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, 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.
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 an independence hero. Agustín was crowned and given the titles of: Agustin de Yturbide por la divina providencia y por el Congreso de la Nación, primer Emperador Constitucional de Mexico (Agustín de Yturbide First Constitutional Emperor of Mexico by Divine Providence and by the Congress of the Nation). 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. The
constitution of 1857 used the term
República Mexicana (
Mexican Republic) interchangeably with
Estados Unidos Mexicanos;
the current constitution, promulgated in 1917, only uses the latter and
United Mexican States is the normative English translation. 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, 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). Still another hypothesis suggests that it's derived from
Mectli, the goddess of
maguey.
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 [meːʃiʔko], was transliterated as "Mexico" using Medieval Spanish phonetics, in which the
x represented the
voiceless postalveolar fricative (/ʃ/, the equivalent of the English
sh in "shop").
J represented the
voiced postalveolar fricative (/ʒ/, 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 (/ʃ/). During the
sixteenth century this sound evolved into a
voiceless velar fricative (/x/, like the
ch in Scottish "loch"), and
México began to be pronounced as ['mexiko].
Given that both
x and
j represented the same new sound (/x/), and in lack of a spelling convention, many words that originally had the /ʃ/ sound, began to be written with
j (for example 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 /x/ regardless of the original spelling of the word, and
x to represent /ks/. (The
ph phoneme suffered a similar fate, in that it was simplified as
f in all words, for example
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,
México is pronounced ['mexiko] or ['mehiko], the latter pronunciation used mostly in dialects of the Caribbean and some places in South America where /x/ has become a
voiceless glottal fricative (/h/). In
English, however, the
x doesn't represent either the original sound /ʃ/ or the modern sound /x/, but the double consonant /ks/; thus Mexico is pronounced as [ˈmɛksɪˌkəʊ].
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 doesn't match the pronunciation of the word. 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. 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 /ʃ/.
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