Tarascan or Tarasca is an exonym and the popular name for the
Purépecha culture. It may refer to:
* the
Tarascan State, a
Mesoamerican empire until the Spanish conquest in the 1500s, located in (present-day) west-central Mexico
* the
Purépecha people
* the
Purépecha language
The term has pejorative connotations when it refers to the people or their language.
Etymology
The name "Tarascan" (and its Spanish-language equivalent, "tarasco") comes from the word "tarascue" in the Purépecha language, which means indistinctly "father-in-law" or "son-in-law". The Spanish took it as their name, for reasons that have been attributed to different, mostly legendary, stories.
The
Nahuatl
Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller ...
name for the Purépecha was "Michhuàquê" ("those who have fish"), whence the name of the Mexican state of
Michoacán
Michoacán, formally Michoacán de Ocampo (; Purépecha: ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Michoacán de Ocampo ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Michoacán de Ocampo), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of ...
.
References
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Exonyms
Purépecha
Ethnonyms