It will be noticed that in Xahila’s _Annals_, every year ends on a day _Ah_, and that each such closing day is numerically three less than the day _Ah_ terminating the preceding year. There are also obvious inconsistencies in his identification of native dates with the Christian calendar; but these, and the numerous difficult questions they suggest, would take me too far afield to enter upon in the present introductory paragraphs. The object of this volume is rather to furnish material for study than to undertake the study itself. The brief description of their reckoning of time, given by Sanchez y Leon, may be quoted: “They divided the year into 18 months, and each month into 20 days; but they counted only by nights, which they mentioned as dawns (alboradas); the movements of the sun in the ecliptic governed their calendar; they began their year forty days before ours; they celebrated annually three great feasts, like Easters, at which periods both sexes assembled together at night, and indulged in drunkenness and wantonness.”[31-2] I think in this extract the author should have said that they began their year 40 days later than ours, as this would bring his statement more into conformity with other writers. _Personal and Family Names._ Among the Cakchiquels, each person bore two names; the first his individual name, the second that of his family or _chinamitl_. This word is pure Nahuatl, and means a place enclosed by a fence,[32-1] and corresponds, therefore, to the Latin _herctum_, and the Saxon _ton_. As adopted by the Cakchiquels, it meant a household or family of one lineage and bearing one name, all of whom were really or theoretically descended from one ancestral household. To all such was applied the term _aca_, related or affined;[32-2] and marriage within the chinamitl was not permitted. When a man of one chinamitl married into another, every male in the latter became his brother-in-law, _baluc_, or son-in-law, _hi_.[32-3] Each _chinamitl_ was presided over by a recognized leader, the “head of the house,” whose title was _ah[c,]alam_, “the keeper of the tablets,”[32-4] probably the painted records on which the genealogy of the family and the duties of its members were inscribed. The division of the early tribes into these numerous families was not ancient, dating, according to tradition, from about a century and a half before the Conquest.[32-5] The family name was sometimes derived from a locality, sometimes from a peculiarity, and at others from astrological motives.[33-1]