In my work on “The Native Calendar of Central America” I pointed out that the hieroglyphs of the names of the days are to be looked upon as rebuses, and therefore do not tell us the real meaning of the name given the day. They are merely the pictures of some familiar visible object or objects, the name of which has more or less similarity to the name of the day, and would serve by an ocular representation to recall it to mind. To repeat what I there said on this essential point: “It is quite misleading to seek the real meaning or derivation of a day-name or other word from the figure which represents it in the hieroglyphic writing. The latter usually stands for a word of an entirely different meaning, the only connection being a more or less similarity of sound.”[[139]]
It should be remembered, therefore, that some of these hieroglyphics of the day-names recur as independent characters with other than calendar significations.
1. Kan. The object represented is a polished stone, shell pendant, or bead, in Maya, kan. It was their circulating medium, and it stands for money, and all which that magic word conveys,—food, prosperity, abundance.[[140]] The dot or eye in the upper portion is the perforation by which it was strung on a cord. Others explain it as an eye (Seler); a tooth (Brasseur); a grain of maize (Schellhas).
2. Chicchan. The allusive design to suggest the name is supplied by the twisted threads chich kuch. See above, p. 96. Brasseur sees in it a petticoat, Seler a serpent’s skin, etc.
3. Cimi. Represented either by an eye closed as in death, cimil; or by the maggot (see above p. 65).
4. Manik. Correctly explained by Brasseur as a hand in the act of grasping, “une main qui se ferme.” Its phonetic value is not kab, hand, but mach, “to grasp” (see above p. 83).