Aztlán was the place they said they came from (probably in today’s U.S. territory). The “Aztecs” called themselves “Mexica”. That’s also their name in Spanish, and I have a faded memory that it is not the name in English only because an anthropologist had trouble pronouncing it or something. Whatever.
Mexicas (meh - SHE - kahs) founded Tenochtitlan. After its fall, you are right, Mexico was named ‘Mexico’ from Nahuatl but people pronounced and pronounce it ‘MEH - hee - koh’ because of the Spanish language influence (think, as in Quixote, ‘kee - HO - teh’).
There were Mexican intellectuals pushing for a ‘meh - SHEE - koh’ pronunciation in the 20th century, but they failed miserably.
HorreC@lemmy.world 1 month ago
there was never a Aztec people that was the name someone made up. The [Mexica] (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztecs) people are the ones you are talking about.
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Someone has made up every name for every thing
HorreC@lemmy.world 1 month ago
No, the people literally called themselves Mexica, they chose to call them Aztecs because they thought it would confuse the people.
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 1 month ago
No, they didn’t call themselves “Mexica”.
They didn’t use the letters “M”, “e”, “x”, “i”, “c”, or even “a”.
Regardless, the term “Mexica” and all of those English letters were made up by someone.