Mayan

How to spell mayan

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mayan

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mayan mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the Maya, an indigenous people and ancient civilisation of southern Mexico and Central America, or to their language and culture.

Mayan in a sentence

• The museum exhibit featured a detailed model of a mayan pyramid.

• Scholars still study the mayan calendar and its accurate astronomical predictions.

Where does mayan come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is the adjective formed from Maya, the name of the indigenous peoples and civilisation of southern Mexico and Central America, famous for their pyramids, calendar, and writing system. The origin of the name Maya itself is genuinely uncertain; one common suggestion links it to Mayapan, a major city in the Yucatan peninsula, while another connects it to a broader regional or ethnic term used in the area. Spanish colonists encountered the people in the sixteenth century and carried the name into European languages, and English adopted it along with the familiar -an ending that English uses to turn place and people names into adjectives, as in 'American' or 'Roman'. Because the root noun ends in a vowel, the adjective simply adds a single 'n', which is the small spelling point worth remembering: it is Mayan, not 'Mayian' or 'Mayyan'. The capitalised proper form is the standard one, since it names a specific culture.

How the word is built

• Maya (the indigenous people and language family of Mesoamerica)
• -n (adjectival suffix)