METZSHIKO!! (What does "Mexico" mean?)

Let's start then with the most important and basic question: the one you ask for sure when you hear the word MEXICO for the first time - What does that mean??

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Well, actually the name of our country is an agglutinate phrase in 'nahuatl' (aglutinada en nahuatl) composed by two 'roots' [very first etymon of a word] and a suffix (you probably don't understand very well if you don't know what this is... anyway, I'll try to explain in a simple way and then I'll give examples):

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'Nahuatl' - spoken by the ancestors of Mexican people - is an "agglutinant language", i.e. you can create new words from a root, by removing the "ending" of that word. In nahatl there are four basic endings (for nouns): tl, tli, li and... well, I don't remember the other one, but it's not very common anyway.

For instance, the root of the word NAHUATL is NAHUA (we remove the ending 'tl'). The root for NANTLI ("mother") is NAN. The root for CITLALLI (star) is CITLAL. With this, we can also create new words or 'place names' by agglutinating these roots with others; for example: the word CITLALTEPETL ("Star Mountain") is made by CITLALLI and TEPETL... but when you put them together it'd be hard to say Citlalitepetl, right? Haha... ok, I think it doesn't matter for you.

So then, the first word is the one that joins the second, that's why you only eliminate the first word's 'ending' (li). If it doesn't go this way, say, the translation for "Mountain Star" (the opposite), we just change the order: TEPECITLALLI (in this case, we remove the ending 'tl' from the word "tepetl").

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Now, after this short nahuatl lesson, we'll understand better where the name of this country comes from.
Let's go back to the beginning... the words that form MEXICO are the following: METZTLI = moon; SHITL (some people write it XITL) = navel; and the nahuatl suffix KO (or CO) which means "in/on". If we agglutinate by supressing the endings, we get the word "METZSHIKO", and that means "On the moon's navel".

You see, the real pronunciation should be 'Metzshiko', not 'Mehiko'. Curiously, the pronunciation that is closer to nahuatl is 'Meksiko', like the one used in other languages (English, Russian, Japanese, etc.).

But here in Mexico, by heritage of Spanish language, we pronounce Mehiko... the spelling is different though, because we write it with an 'x' (MEXICO).

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So everytime you visit us, you'll be walking "in the moon's navel". Welcome!!