This brings me to a name which has very curious meanings, to wit, _Tepeu_. It is the ordinary word in these dialects for lord, ruler, chief or king. Its form in Cakchiquel is _Tepex_, in Maya _Tepal_, and it is probably from the adjective root _tep_, filled up, supplied in abundance, satisfied. In Quiche and Cakchiquel it is used synonymously with _galel_ or _gagal_ and _ahau_, as a translation of Señor or Cacique. But it has another definite meaning, and that is, the disease _syphilis_; and what is not less curious, this meaning extends also in a measure to _gagal_ and _ahau_. This extraordinary collocation of ideas did not escape the notice of Ximenez, and he undertakes to explain it by suggestion that as syphilis arises from cohabitation with many different women, and this is a privilege only of the great and powerful, so the name came to be applied to the chiefs and nobles, and to their god.[137] Of course, syphilis has no such origin; but if the Indians thought it had, and considered it a proof of extraordinary genetic power, it would be a plausible supposition that they applied this term to their divinity as being the type of the fecundating principle. But the original sense of the adjective _tep_ does not seem to bear this out, and it would rather appear that the employment of the word as the name of the disease was a later and secondary sense. Such is the opinion of Father Coto, who says that the term was applied jestingly to those suffering from syphilitic sores, because, like a chieftain or a noble, they did no work, but had to sit still with their hands in their laps, as it were, waiting to get well.[138] The same strange connection occurs in other American mythologies. Thus in the Aztec tongue _nanahuatl_ means a person suffering from syphilis; it is also, in a myth preserved by Sahagun, the name of the Sun-God, and it is related of him that as a sacrifice, before becoming the sun, he threw into the sacrificial flames, not precious gifts, as the custom was, but the scabs from his sores.[139] So also Caracaracol, a prominent figure in Haytian mythology, is represented as suffering from sores or buboes. The name _Gucumatz_ is correctly stated by Ximenez to be capable of two derivations. The first takes it from _gugum_, a feather; _tin gugumah_, I embroider or cover with feathers. The second derivation is from _gug_, feather, and _cumatz_, the generic name for serpent. The first of these is that which the writer of the _Popol Vuh_ preferred, as appears from his expression; “They are folded in the feathers (_gug_), the green ones; therefore their name is Gugumatz; very wise indeed are they” (p. 6). The brilliant plumage of the tropical birds was constantly used by these tribes as an ornament for their clothing and their idols, and the possession of many of these exquisite feathers was a matter of pride.