·     Variants (5):

o A. Full form: small sign above & boulder below.

o B. Reduced form 1: small sign only.

o C. Reduced form 2: boulder only – given only by TOK.

o D. L-form:

§ Tokovinine explains in a lecture that the long “tubular” part represents the stem of the waterlily leaf, and the “flared out part” represents the leaf or waterlily pad (hence the waterlily markings) [lost reference].

§ Dorota Bojkowska: the other end is almost definitely an unopened lily flower.

o E. Head form:

§ Dorota Bojkowska doesn’t know what the distinguishing features of the head variant of NAHB are – it only occurs in Palenque [Discussed during Mesoamerica Meetings 2023?]

§ Sheseña-LC explained that the multiple dots under the eyes are tears.

§ Sim: The multiple dots surrounded by small cross-hatched area below them has some resemblance to an element in syllabogram ja, but there may be no connection, as this one has many more dots (ja usually has only two or three).

·     The “corn kernels” (touching dots in the small element at the top) in “A”, “B”, “C” are slightly unexpected – perhaps water is associated with rain, and rain enables the growth of corn? Unclear if they have any connection to the dots in “E”.

·     JM.p178.#5: identical to HA’ water (listed as JA’ JM.p109.#5) ~= HA’ MC.p163.r2.c5 (minor differences like bold inner circle, 4 double grass blades). Dorota Bojkowska: This is an old reading, proposed very early by Schele and Grube (“The glyph for Plaza or Court”, Copan Note 86). It’s now well-established that this glyph is HA’.

·     Do not confuse this with the phonetically similar/identical NAB meaning “handspan” – a unit of measurement for the size of balls in the ballgame.

·     The -h- is never reflected in the spelling of Classic Maya and is reconstructed from the Colonial Spanish and modern Mayan languages.