Document Type

Article

Keywords

Tenochtitlan, Mexico City (Mexico), Toponyms, Place names, Nahuatl language, Nahuatl culture, Nahuas, Nahuatl place names, José Antonio Alzate, Alfonso Caso

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology | Latin American Languages and Societies | Other History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology

Abstract

The place-names that residents of the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan (today Mexico City) gave to their city were both descriptive of topography and commemorative of history. Largely efaced from the Spanish historical register, Mexico City’s Nahuatl place-names were rescued from historical oblivion by José Antonio Alzate in the eighteenth century and again by Alfonso Caso in the twentieth. However, efacement is not equal to extinction, and this article argues for the continued use, even creation, of Nahuatl place-names into the eighteenth century. It suggests that the scholar’s desire to use place-names as an index to a pre-Hispanic past has obscured the vital presence of the city’s Nahua people, and their language, in the colonial period

Publication Title

Ethnohistory 61, no. 2 (Spring 2014)

Article Number

1008

Publication status

Copyright of Ethnohistory is the property of Duke University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use

Publication Date

2014

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