Footnotes for Postal Map of Nicaragua (Patreon)

As promised in the previous post of the free print-ready postal map of Nicaragua, I've prepared a spreadsheet of footnotes for you to dive deeper into the real history and creative decisions behind the map. Here's the link to the spreadsheet.

In the spreadsheet, you'll find multiple sheets with different themes of information. The first sheet will give you linguistic information tied to each altepetl or dependency-like country within the Chicuexcan of Nicaragua. The second sheet will give you a full breakdown of how the name of each altepetl was derived, giving the Nahuatl etymology, Nahuatl name, and colonial name with Spanish orthography. It should be noted that while I do provide the endonyms of the prevailing linguistic group in each altepetl, I do not provide the corresponding endonym for each altepetl.

In the spreadsheet, you'll also find a separate sheet or table for converting the postal to official city names. As I said before, the inspiration for staining/obscuring the toponyms with this colonial lore comes from the real history of Chinese postal romanization, which I think is quite humorous. Like the Mayan-based script used in ATL Nicaragua, the Chinese writing system was difficult for foreign correspondents to write out when posting mail. To solve this, romanization or transliteration of Chinese into the Latin script was necessary. As the Chinese postal service run by foreigners at the highest levels, the OTL Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, and for a while, its successors, used their own romanization transcription system parallel to other state romanization systems.

I hope you enjoy!