For some reason, one of the demonyms best known in Mexico It’s of “tapatío”. However, few people know why they are called that way, since the natural thing would be to call them Guadalajara or Guadalajareños.
To begin with, you should know that, according to the last count, there are 89,169 Tapatios. Well, this is without counting those who left Guadalajara to migrate to other states of the country or to foreign.
More than 2 million people from Guadalajara on the planet
Now, the inhabitants of the other nine municipalities of the region are also considered Guadalajara. Guadalajara metropolitan area(Zapopan, Tlaquepaque, Tonala, Tlajomulco, The jump, Ixtlahuacan, Juanacatlán, Zapotlanejo and Acatlan) the number of people who occupy the name in question reaches 2 million 145 thousand.
It all started with the Nahuatl word “tapatiotl”
Having explained the above, we must say that everything indicates that the name originates in the Nahuatl word tapatiotl, which means “worth three.” And this is where things get confusing because while some say that this word was used to name three little sacks of cocoaothers say that the tapatiotl was also the name of a currency old metal.
Cocoa was a currency on its own
We cannot affirm one thing or another here, but it is almost certain that there was no metallic coin called that, what there was were the famous little sacks full of cocoa, which, when three were together, were called tapatiotl. And, as has already been published before in México Desconocido, cocoa was used to pay for goods and services. So yes, cocoa, it was a kind of currency.
At some point the word tapatiotl derived from the name “tapatío”, perhaps assuming that the inhabitants of Guadalajara They were worth a lot, three times more than another person, so to speak.
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