El Topónimo Uruapan y la Identidad de los Fundadores de la Ciudad

This article is devoted to the study of the origins of the Mexican place name Uruapan, a city officially known as Uruapan del Progreso in the state of Michoacan, with the purpose of reconstructing the original name by identifying and comparing the diverse versions of the name throughout the time, as well as establishing the ethnic identity of the founders of the town. The main hypothesis developed in the article states that the toponymic data can shed light on the socio-historical processes and allow one to establish the ethnic identity of the founders of a place. The relevance of such research is grounded in the continuing interest in Mesoamerica's past and in the discrepancies regarding the interpretation of the toponymy of Uruapan. The materials used for this study are vast and comprehensive, integrating texts, archive materials, as well as cartographic and lexicographic sources. The method followed was based on a diachronic comparison of components including morphological, semantic, and cognitive structures. The article demonstrates the motivation behind the toponymy of Uruapan, alongside its static and dynamic dimensions. The proposed version of its Nahuatl origin is based on phonological, grammatical, lexicographical, semantic, and socio-historic data. Such an interpretation allows the authors to establish the Nahuatl identity of the founders of the town. It also reveals the ethnogenesis of the autochthonous population in Mesoamerica and in the state of Michoacan, as well as the migration patterns and the oscillations in the collective memory of the native population. The authors come to the conclusion that the place name for Uruapan comes not from Purepecha but from Nahuatl, which implies the Nahuatl identity of the founders of the town.