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Classic Maya name

Colonial Yucatec name

Patron

Mnemonic / Comment

1

K’an-jalaw

Pop

BAHLAM / HIX

The most important mammal, so comes first. MHD sees this as HIX rather than BAHLAM.

2

Ihk’at

Wo

“JGU” / CHUWAJ

The Underworld is a dark (= IHK’) place.

Alternatively: the Underworld is associated with “woe”.

3

Chakat

Sip

“SNB”/MIIN

The SNB sips blood which is “red” (= CHAK).

4

Suutz’

Sotz’

XOOK

The bat and the shark (and the crocodile) have an unusual, up-turned nose.

5

Kasew

Sek

KAB = “earth” or CHAN = “sky”

Secular = earth (and hence also sky).

6

Chikin

Xul

LEM + anthropomorphic head with a very distinctive line curving from the eye.

Dorota: this special long curved line is associated with dwarfs.

XuL: L è LEM.

7

Yaxk’in

Yaxk’in

K’IN / K’INICH

The first K’IN is the most important K’IN.

8

Mol

Mol

AK’AB

Moles live in darkness.

9

Ihk’-sihoom

Ch’en

UH / Chac Chel

Chinchilla-ItCotMG.p434.pdfp11.para2.l-1 (date unclear) says it’s the “Lunar Maize God”.

Ihk’ è black è darkness, and the moon is most visible in darkness.

Alternatively: Ch’en è Chak Chel è Moon Goddess.

10

Yax-sihoom

Yax

Variants (2):

·    A. Abstract variant: EK’

·    B. Head variant: “Venus monster”, with long pointed snout

Yax è Y, cut off the bottom of the Y è V è Venus è Chak Ek’ è EK’ (and “Venus monster” also).

11

Sak-sihoom

Sak

CHAN = “snake-1”

“A sackful of snakes” (MHD “blcodes contains AC6a” gives 460 hits of bllogosyll = kan – but only 5 of them are in an ISIG, and only one of the 5 is clearly associated with month YAX).

12

Chak-sihoom

Keh

TOK

With the four “SIHOOM (rain god) months”, CHAK is the “greatest” – the greatest rain god è “storm” = TOK. See SIHOOM and TOK in the CMGG.

13

Mak

Mak

IK’ – variants (2):

·    A. Abstract variant of IK’ = “wind”:

·    B. God-head variant of “3” (which has an infixed IK’).

Muck is icky.

14

Uniw

K’ank’in

Variants (2):

·    A. Abstract variant: “double-arch” (a nickname given by Thompson?).

·    B. Head variant: monster head CHAPAAT? with the characteristics of two fangs curving backwards, hanging from the top of the mouth (at the end of the snout).

The K’-K’ of K’ank’in suggests:

the two fangs of the centipede and the “double arches”.

15

Muwaan

Muwan

K’UH

The Bird Deity is divine.

16

Pax

Pax

SIBIK.TE’ = <PAX-deity-head> = no mandible, instead, a scroll to the right, some touching dots attached under the cruller around the eye (= head version of logogram-TE’)

“A Passion for Ink” è SIBIK.

17

K’anasiiy

K’ayab

“TMG” / JUUN IXIIM

ka-na-si (Hokkien) è “The Young Maize God keeps dying (and resurrecting)” (not a very useful mnemonic for non-Hokkien speakers).

18

Hul-ohl

Kumk’u

CHAN = “snake-2”, with optional infixed BIH

The mouth is closed compared to the snake for Sak, where the mouth is open.

Most important reptile, so comes last.

MHD maps both the one in QRGStC and the one in COLSPan (Zürich Panel) to MHD.AC8a, which, in other contexts is the head variant of BIH. But neither of these concrete examples have a quincunx infixed in the top of the head.

19

Wayhaab

Wayeb

UH?

A search in MHD on “blsem contains ISIG/Wayeb” yields three hits. This is while “blsem contains ISIG/” yields 420+ hits, so the patron of Wayeb is almost never found infixed in the ISIG. These three hits are:

·        CRC Stela 14.

·        UAX Stela 6.

·        YAX Stela 6.

Unfortunately, in one of the three, the patron infixed in the ISIG is too eroded to tell what it is. In the other two cases, MHD speculates that it might be the moon glyph UH (which the uneroded infixed glyph does indeed look like) – given with a question mark. Unfortunately, this would “clash” with the patron of Ch’en (month 9), for which there is a sufficient number of uneroded examples to establish that its patron is UH (there are 6 hits with very clear UH – some being just the crescent and others a personified crescent of a woman’s head and shoulders with the partial crescent).

The month of Wayeb very rarely appears as the first or major event of an inscription anyway because it was considered to be an unlucky month. Furthermore, with only 5 days in it, there was less likelihood of an event of importance occurring in that month. Events recorded in inscriptions were usually rituals and victories and these would generally not have occurred in the 5 days of the unlucky month of Wayeb.

One of the 3 hits is for YAX Stela 6. The event commemorated happened on LC = 9.11.16.10.13, 5-Ben 1-Wayeb (A5-C5a). This is the 2nd katun anniversary of Yaxuun Bahlam III's accession to the rulership (C5b-C6) of Yaxchilan. The original accession itself occurred on LC = 9.10.16.10.13, 7-Ben 16-Sek (2 June 649 AD), which was not in the month of Wayeb. So I suppose that if the anniversary happened to fall on a Wayeb day, then they had to commemorate it after all, even if it was considered an unlucky day. Furthermore, while this explanation sounds quite plausible, Wayeb being considered unlucky is a phenomenon of late in the Late Classic– it might not have been so (or so strong) earlier in the Classic (Erika Raven, personal communication, October 2022).