According to Hernan Cortes' first letter (Cartas de relacion) to the King of Spain, "Yucatan" represents a mis-naming of the land by his political antagonist Diego Velazquez. Cortes alleges that when Velazquez initially landed in the Yucatan and asked about the name of the well-populated land, the indigenous people answered, "We don't understand your language." This was supposedly rendered as Yucatan by the Spaniards, who were unfamiliar with the phonetics of Mayan. However, there was political antagonism between Cortes and Velazquez, and this story evidently represents an attempt to defame Velazquez. The actual source of the name "Yucatan" is the Nahuatl (Aztec) word Yokatlān, "place of richness."
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-04-09 06:10 pm (UTC)According to Hernan Cortes' first letter (Cartas de relacion) to the King of Spain, "Yucatan" represents a mis-naming of the land by his political antagonist Diego Velazquez. Cortes alleges that when Velazquez initially landed in the Yucatan and asked about the name of the well-populated land, the indigenous people answered, "We don't understand your language." This was supposedly rendered as Yucatan by the Spaniards, who were unfamiliar with the phonetics of Mayan. However, there was political antagonism between Cortes and Velazquez, and this story evidently represents an attempt to defame Velazquez. The actual source of the name "Yucatan" is the Nahuatl (Aztec) word Yokatlān, "place of richness."