·     The glyph appears to be a mammal head with a fish in front of it.

o Note that the fish is not distinctly in the mammal’s mouth, whereas KOOJ, MUWAAN, and the bird-head variant of AL all have their respective objects distinctly in the mouth. This means that the possibility exists that the fish in this case is deliberately portrayed as being in front of the mouth of the mammal rather than in it.

o I don’t think however that this fish is ka serving as an initial phonetic complement, as there don’t appear to be any instances of the “comb variant” in front of the mammal head; i.e. I believe that in iconographic and semantic terms, an actual fish is intended to be present. However, I continue to find the fact that it’s not in the mouth of the mammal slightly puzzling. This could be explained by the fact that the full KAY/fish glyph is visually a lot more complex than is the case for the objects in KOOJ, MUWAAN, and the bird-head variant of AL, hence making it less practicable to portray the fish in the mouth. And/or it was considered sufficient to portray a mammal associated with fish, rather than actually eating one.

·     The suggested / tentative pronunciation YAK? comes from BMM9, and KABKOH? from TOK.

·     At the MatL2022 Glyph Workshop:

o It was pointed out that the three dots on the top and back of the head of the mammal in the Canberra Tripod (K8458) are “water beads”. [Sim: K8458 is not findable in mayavase.com]

o It was speculated that the glyph represents an otter – all the more so as: “all across Mesoamerica, a common term for ‘otter’ is ‘water dog’“, and the mammal head looks like that of a dog.

o Photographs of three ceramics were shown (Chakah Str A-3 Vessel, K679, San Diego Bowl) with the name of Chak Tz’i’ha’ Ahk rendered as “Russet Otter Turtle” = Ruler 28 of El Perú-Waka.

o Two drawings were shown (of the Bagaces Mirror Back and Canberra Tripod) with the names of two Early Classic El Zotz’ rulers with the same name – Chak Tz’i’ha’ Ahk – as Ruler 28 of El Perú-Waka.

o The reading of the glyph was given as TZI’I’-HA’. [Sim: but semantically speaking HA’-TZ’I’ would seem to be more sensible, because in noun-noun compounds, the first noun qualifies the second in Classic Maya.]

·     Raven (from Davletshin & Beliaev, separate discussion): YAK is “skunk” not otter anyway.

·     Davletshin: it’s probably a “water opossum” and if you look at the glyphs, it looks more like a water opossum than an otter.