CMGG entry for kokan      (This article is part of the Learner's Maya Glyph Guide and Concordance.)

Translation: stingray spine
Part of speech: Noun

Logogram spellings of kokan

                                      A drawing of a spine  Description automatically generated              

K&L.p19.#3                                                                                     TOK.p9.r4.c3                              BMM9.p18.r6.c3             

KOKAN                                                                                             KOKAN                                        KOKAN                               

 

                                  

JM.p135.#5                         JM.p136.#1                          JM.p136.#

KIX(?)                                    KIX(?)                                    KIX(?)

 

·     No glyphs given in K&H.

·     JM gives these as kix(?) – this is a known previous reading, now outdated (Dorota Bojkowska thinks this KOKAN reading was established by Marc Zender).

·     Grofe-TGYotM.p1.fn1: The name of this legendary king was previously read as “Uk’ix Chan” (Schele 1992; Stuart 2005:115). Both Albert Davletshin (2003) and Marc Zender (2002) independently deciphered the stingray spine logogram as KOKAN ‘stingray spine’ given the repeated -na suffix. More recently, Andrea Stone and Marc Zender (2011:78-79) propose KOHKAN based on the Yucatec kòoh-kan meaning ‘snake tooth/fang’ (Bricker, Po’ot Yah, Dzul de Po’ot 1998:131). However, Davletshin argues that this is most likely to be a folk etymology and a later reinterpretation, particularly in that “He is the Snake’s Tooth of Snake” would not make sense within this name (Davletshin 2003:3). Given the lack of any indication of the phonetic spelling of either of the logograms in this name, I will retain the established reading of U Kokan Chan ‘The Stingray Spine of the Snake’ throughout this paper. However, we should note that Kan Bahlam II, who commissioned the Cross Group, spells his name using a syllabic ka- prefix. [Sim: the text of this footnote comes from the draft version of the paper posted to academia.edu – the final version uploaded to Glyph Dwellers has a much shorter equivalent.]