Street leading to La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
My grandfather was from Guanajuato, a state in Central Mexico. As an adult, I would travel there every couple of years to visit him. He lived in San Miguel de Allende, a beautiful city with colonial style buildings that is becoming increasingly popular with tourists.
When I was a teenager, my grandfather told me that his father spoke a language called Nahuatl. This is an indigenous language in Mexico that only about 1% of Mexicans speak. It was the language of the Aztecs and used to be widely spoken in Mexico. However, older generations have stopped teaching this language to their children. In addition, younger generations of Mexicans want to learn English and other international languages, so there is not as much interest to learn their heritage language. I soon became interested in this language and tried to find someone in Mexico who could teach it to me.
I met a man named Ulises, who was a street vendor in the main plaza of San Miguel. He grew up in a small village and spoke Nahuatl as his native language. He taught me different words and phrases in Nahuatl, but the most interesting thing that he taught me was about the history of Mexico, and how Mexico got its name.
Origin of “Mexico”
Ulises told me that the Aztecs were originally in the southwestern United States. One of their gods, Huitzilopochtli, commanded them to move their people south and build their new empire where they find an eagle eating a snake on a cactus that is growing on a rock.
The Aztecs traveled south until they reached a large lake. On the lake (later called Lake Texcoco), they saw a cactus growing on a rock. An eagle was perched on the cactus and eating a snake. They decided to build their empire on an island within the lake. They called this place Tenochtitlan, which means “ where the cactus grows on the rock.” The importance of this symbol for the Aztecs is still seen on the Mexican flag today.
When the Aztecs arrived to this lake, it was at night with a full moon, and the moon was reflected on the surface of the lake. They named this place Mexihco (pronounced “Meh-SHEE-ko”) which meant “the place at the center of the moon.”
When the Spanish arrived, they could not pronounce the “sh” sound, so they pronounced it as an “h” sound. When they wrote down the word “Mexico”, they represented this sound by an “x”, which is why Mexico is spelled with an x today. Based on modern-day Spanish pronunciation, Mexico should be spelled “Mejico”, but they have opted to keep their traditional spelling. Other Mexican cities, such as Oaxaca, have also kept their traditional spelling.
While historians have differing opinions on how Mexico got its name, this theory seems the most realistic to me. Other experts have concluded that Mexico does mean “the center of the moon” in Nahuatl, but could not explain why it was called that.
Based on the fact that the Aztecs built their empire within Lake Texcoco, Ulises’ story seems to hold some weight. It will be interesting to see what additional theories about the origin of Mexico’s name are created in the future.
