These are the visitors who come, one every morning, with flowing robes, full beard and hair, and bring with them our good or bad luck--whatever the day brings forth.

Hernandez made the same mistake as did Father Francisco de Bobadilla, when he inquired of the Nicaraguans the names of their gods, and they gave him those of the twenty days of the month.[1] Each day was, indeed, personified by these nations, and supposed to be at once a deity and a date, favorable or unfavorable to fishing or hunting, planting or fighting, as the case might be.
[Footnote 1: Oviedo, _Historia General de las Indias_, Lib.

xlii, cap.
iii.] Kukulcan seems, therefore, to have stood in the same relation in Yucatan to the other divinities of the days as did Votan in Chiapa and Quetzalcoatl Ce Acatl in Cholula.
His name has usually been supposed to be a compound, meaning "a serpent adorned with feathers," but there are no words in the Maya language to justify such a rendering.

There is some variation in its orthography, and its original pronunciation may possibly be lost; but if we adopt as correct the spelling which I have given above, of which, however, I have some doubts, then it means, "The God of the Mighty Speech."[1] [Footnote 1: Eligio Ancona, after giving the rendering, "serpiente adornada de plumas," adds, "ha sido repetido por tal numero de etimologistas que tendremos necesidad de aceptarla, aunque nos parece un poco violento," _Historia de Yucatan_, Vol.

i, p.44.The Abbe Brasseur, in his _Vocabulaire Maya_, boldly states that _kukul_ means "emplumado o adornado con plumas." This rendering is absolutely without authority, either modern or ancient.