Personal and Family Names.
Among the Cakchiquels, each person bore two names; the first his individual name, the second that of his family or chinamitl. This word is pure Nahuatl, and means a place enclosed by a fence[1] and corresponds, therefore, to the Latin herctum, and the Saxon ton. As adopted by the Cakchiquels, it meant a household or family of one lineage and bearing one name, all of whom were really or theoretically descended from one ancestral household. To all such was applied the term aca, related or affined;[2] and marriage within the chinamitl was not permitted. When a man of one chinamitl married into another, every male in the latter became his brother-in-law, baluc, or son-in-law, hi.[3]
Each chinamtil was presided over by a recognized leader, the "head of the house," whose title was ahꜯalam, "the keeper of the tablets,"[4] probably the painted records on which the genealogy of the family and the duties of its members were inscribed.
The division of the early tribes into these numerous families was not ancient, dating, according to tradition, from about a century and a half before the Conquest."[5]
- ↑ "Chinamitl, seto o cerca de cañas," from chinantia, to build a fence, to enclose.—Molina, Vocabulario de la Lengua Mexicana.
- ↑ Torresano, in his Arte de la Lengua Cakchiquel, MS., gives this word as ca, which indicates its probable derivation from the verb cae, to join together, to unite, "those united by a common tie."
- ↑ Coto, Vocabulario de la Lengua Cakchiquel, MS., sub voce, Cuñado.
- ↑ Coto, u. s., s. v. Alguaçil. The word ꜯalam is now applied to the canvas or tablets on which are painted the saints in the churches. It also means a box or chest.—Dicc. Cakchiquel Anon.
- ↑ See Brasseur, Hist, du Mexique et l’ Am. Cent., Tom. II, pp. 489-90.
