The Gulf of Mexico: Ayollohco Mexihco
In Nahuatl, the Gulf of Mexico is Ayollohco Mexihco.
Now, that’s not what pre-Spanish Invasion Nahuas called the body of water, which they saw as just part of the endless cosmic sea. But the modern name matters quite a bit.
Despite Google Maps bending the knee to a ridiculous, jingoistic, and frankly racist change in name, you should note the following fact:
The word “Mexico” was used for two hundred years before the word “America” was ever coined.
Mexico comes from a Nahuatl word, the name of a kingdom founded in 1325 by a tribe then known as the Mexihtin—
“Mexihco.”
Place of Mexihtli.
The lore of the Mexihtin asserted that they had originally been Aztecah, working class serfs in the distant land of Aztlan. Some accounts claimed that a semi-divine leader named had Mexihtli led them out of oppression and set them on a southeasterly path toward their destiny.
It took centuries.
But eventually the Mexihtin (“the people of Mexihtli”) found a home on a rocky, desolate isle in the middle of Moon Lake (later Lake Tetzcoco).
They named this promised land Mexihco.
Then they built a city there.
Tenochtitlan.
A hundred years later, they forged a Triple Alliance. An Empire.
And when the Spanish invaded, they used the name of the most ascendant kingdom in that alliance and applied it to all of the land from sea to sea controlled by the Mexihcah—“the people of Mexihco”, as the Mexihtin now called themselves.
The name of their kingdom was pronounced me-SHEE’-koh, with a hitch after the second syllable, a glottal stop.
In early 16th-century Spanish, the letter “x” was pronounced like English “sh,” but a sibilant shift would change it to an aspirated “h” (written /x/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet) by the end of the century.
As a result, Mexihco became “México,” which became Mexico (with a “ks” sound) in English.
And ever since Spanish ships began to arrive in droves across the westernmost edge of the Atlantic Ocean, cartographers have referred to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico, adopting the Nahuatl name through a Spanish filter.
Around that same time, mapmakers invented a name for the continent.
“America” was the feminine form of “Americus,” the Latinized version of the given name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
The -a ending was preferred so it would echo “Asia, Africa, Europa, Australia,” etc.
No nation ever bore it. No people ever claimed it.
Cartographers simply made it up.
But the Mexica did very much consider Mexico their promised homeland. For two centuries, other nations of Mesoamerica uttered those three syllables in awe.
Mexico is no foreign imposition. It arises from the land that borders the western edge of the gulf.
It is nigh-on BLASPHEMOUS to change it.
No matter what fascists may say, it will always be Ayollohco Mexihco.
The Gulf of Mexico.
Of the Mexica and all the lands they united.
Of Mexihtli, the legendary leader who led them there.
Never forget. They cannot erase what is written in our minds and hearts.
