·     As with other relationship terms, this is practically never found without the possessive prefix. However, Hamann-PiCM.p6.para1: […] there are only three examples of unpossessed kinship terms in the corpus: unen-ø ‘a baby’, b’a-‘al-ø ‘a first child of a woman’ and atan-ø ‘a wife’, as opposed to the possessed forms y-unen ‘his/her baby’, y-al ‘her child’, y-atan ‘his wife’.

·     Sim: Some epigraphers gloss this as “spouse” rather than “wife”, although it never seems to be used for males; i.e. is never used for “husband”, only ever for “wife”. Perhaps it’s because they want to cover concubines as well, and don’t want to map the Maya concept of atan too closely to English “wife”. In any case, it’s used only for women, not for men.