The explanation I have to offer is just the reverse. The use of the terminal b in “Mayab” is probably a dialectic error, other examples of which can be quoted. Thus the writer of the Dictionary of Motul informs us that the form maab is sometimes used for the ordinary negative ma, no; but, he adds, it is a word of the lower classes, es palabra de gente comun. So I have little doubt but that Mayab is a vulgar form of the word, which may have gradually gained ground.
As at present used, the accent usually falls on the first syllable, Ma´ya, and the best old authorities affirm this as a rule; but it is a rule subject to exceptions, as at the end of a sentence and in certain dialects Dr. Berendt states that it is not infrequently heard as Ma´ya´ or even Maya´.[14-1]
The meaning and derivation of the word have given rise to the usual number of nonsensical and far-fetched etymologies. The Greek, the Sanscrit, the ancient Coptic and the Hebrew have all been called in to interpret it. I shall refer to but a few of these profitless suggestions.
The Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg) quotes as the opinion of Don Ramon de Ordoñez, the author of a strange work on American archæology, called History of the Heaven and the Earth, that Maya is but an abbreviation of the phrase ma ay ha, which, the Abbé adds, means word for word, non adest aqua, and was applied to the peninsula on account of the scarcity of water there.[15-1]
Unfortunately that phrase has no such, nor any, meaning in Maya; were it ma yan haa, it would have the sense he gives it; and further, as the Abbé himself remarked in a later work, it is not applicable to Yucatan, where, though rivers are scarce, wells and water abound. He therefore preferred to derive it from ma and ha, which he thought he could translate either “Mother of the Water,” or “Arm of the Land!”[15-2]
The latest suggestion I have noticed is that of Eligio Ancona, who, claiming that Mayab is the correct form, and that this means “not numerous,” thinks that it was applied to the first native settlers of the land, on account of the paucity of their numbers![15-3]
All this seems like learned trifling. The name may belong to that ancient dialect from which are derived many of the names of the days and months in the native calendar, and which, as an esoteric language, was in use among the Maya priests, as was also one among the Aztecs of Mexico. Instances of this, in fact, are very common among the American aborigines, and no doubt many words were thus preserved which could not be analyzed to their radicals through the popular tongue.
Or, if it is essential to find a meaning, why not accept the obvious signification of the name? Ma is the negative “no,” “not;” ya means rough, fatiguing, difficult, painful, dangerous. The compound maya is given in the Dictionary of Motul with the translations “not arduous nor severe; something easy and not difficult to do;” cosa no grave ni recia; cosa facil y no dificultosa de hacer. It was used adjectively as in the phrase, maya u chapahal, his sickness is not dangerous. So they might have spoken of the level and fertile land of Yucatan, abounding in fruit and game, that land to which we are told they delighted to give, as a favorite appellation, the term u luumil ceh, u luumil cutz, the land of the deer, the land of the wild turkey; of this land, I say, they might well have spoken as of one not fatiguing, not rough nor exhausting.
§ 2. The Maya Linguistic Family.
Whatever the primitive meaning and first application of the name Maya, it is now used to signify specifically the aborigines of Yucatan. In a more extended sense, in the expression “the Maya family,” it is understood to embrace all tribes, wherever found, who speak related dialects presumably derived from the same ancient stock as the Maya proper.