Chap. IV. OF AZTEC ORIGIN. 55 
races, and most likely expressed some old political con- 
nexion of the Cholutecans with nations who spoke a different 
language from that of the latter. In this extended histo- 
rical application the name was vulgarised, while the caste of 
" nobles" (i. e. y the real Cholutecans), who may have been 
a fragment of the Chololtecas of Mexico, retained the purer 
form of the denomination. Whatever may be the true 
explanation of these difficulties, the question as to the 
language of the Cholutecans of Nicaragua may still be 
decided by the study of the Indian idioms still existing in 
the district of Honduras called Choluteca, on the Gulf of 
Fonseca, and in the Nicaraguan provinces of Nuevo Segovia 
and Matagalpa. 
As to the village of Jinotepet, Mr. Buschmann, of Berlin, 
who is deeply engaged in the investigation of American 
languages, and who has published a paper on the geogra- 
phical names derived from the Aztec, 1 could not translate 
the two first syllables ; but, the whole name being trans- 
lated to me as signifying " wind-mountain," Jino may be a 
contraction or mutilation of the word Chiquinau, which, 
according to Oviedo, was one of the two names the inha- 
bitants of Nicaragua gave to the god of the wind. The 
other name was Hecact, which is the Aztec Ehecatl, 
signifying wind. Chiquinau, then, must have been the 
name of that deity, or of the element of the air, in the 
Dirian language, and the name of Jinotepet appears as a 
compound of two words derived from two languages. The 
same seems to be the case with the name of the neigh- 
bouring village of Masatepet, though Mr. Buschmann trans- 
lates it by deer-mountain, from the Aztec mazatl, deer. 
That village, however, is quite close to the town of Masaya, 
Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen. Von Job. Carl Ed. Buschmann. Berlin, 1853. 
