Men (Tz’ikin)
The fifteenth Maya day sign, an aged head with a line of dots from the eye. In the highlands it is Tz’ikin, the bird, the day of money and merchants.
Meaning
Men is the fifteenth of the twenty day signs of the 260-day count; in K’iche’ it is Tz’ikin. The Aztec day in the same place is Quauhtli, eagle (see Aztec day signs), and the name used in Chiapas and the Guatemalan highlands means bird. The K’iche’ daykeepers of Komon Tohil, in Zunil, Guatemala, in an account of the days that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian reproduces on its Living Maya Time site, derive Tz’ikin from “bird”. It is the Creator of the Universe, they write, all that is in space, and also the day of money, of business and of merchants.
Origin and history
Morley found the day very rare on the monuments. In the codices, Eric Thompson wrote, its glyph is a head with a line of dots running back from the eye and a mouth with no teeth but one or two large molars, the features of an aged deity, and he concluded that Men was the day of the aged moon goddess, patroness of weaving. The Yucatec word men has nothing to do with birds: it is the root of “to do” or “to make”, and ah men is still the Yucatec name for prayer-makers and curers.
How old is the bird?
In 1950 Thompson could not say why Tz’ikin had become the name of the day in Chiapas and the highlands, and suspected the likeness to the word for bird might be chance. Later epigraphy has a bearing on it: Harri Kettunen and Christophe Helmke list Tz’ikin, with a question mark, as a possible Classic Maya name of the day.
Read next
- Next in Maya symbols and godsKib’ (Ajmaq)The sixteenth Maya day sign, read as a section of a shell. Its names are wax, sinner and the souls of the ancestors; K’iche’ daykeepers call it Ajmaq, a day to give thanks and avoid mistakes.
- The same shape in Tarot cardsPage of CupsThe page of cups in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a studious page looking at a fish rising from a cup. A. E. Waite read it as a studious young man, news and reflection.
See also
Eb’ (E), Kukulkan, Chaac, Itzamna, Maize God, Maya calendar.
Sources
- Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction (J. Eric S. Thompson, 1950), J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An Introduction, Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 589 (Washington, 1950), chapter 3, “The cycle of 260 days”; Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, pp. 82–84, “Men, Tzikin, Tzicin”
- An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs (Sylvanus G. Morley, 1915), Sylvanus Griswold Morley, An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 57 (Smithsonian Institution, 1915), chapter III and figs. 16–17; Project Gutenberg eBook 43491, Project Gutenberg, chapter III, Table I; p. 40
- The Meaning of the Days in the Maya Sacred Calendar (Komon Tohil, Living Maya Time), Group of K’iche’ Day Keepers Komon Tohil, Zunil, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, “The Meaning of the Days in the Maya Sacred Calendar”, reproduced with permission in Living Maya Time, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (PDF), National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, p. 2, Tz’ikin
- Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs (Harri Kettunen and Christophe Helmke, Mesoweb, 2020), Harri Kettunen and Christophe Helmke, Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs, 17th revised edition (Wayeb and Mesoweb, 2020), Appendices, Tables X–XI, “Day names in the Tzolk’in calendar”, Mesoweb, Table XI
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
Added .