Colima

English

Map of Mexico highlighting Colima.

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish Colima, of Nahuatl origin.

Proper noun

Colima

1. A city and state of Mexico.

Translations

state of Mexico

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 科利馬 / 科利马 (Kēlìmǎ)

• Greek: Κολίμα f (Kolíma)
• Marathi: कोलिमा n (kolimā)
• Polish: Colima f
• Russian: Коли́ма (ru) f (Kolíma)
• Spanish: Colima (es) f

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from Classical Nahuatl Collimān (the name of a historic kingdom roughly situated in modern-day Colima), of uncertain further origin; however, the most probable proposed etymology is the following:

• Based on the hieroglyph for Collimān in the Codex Mendoza, depicting a bent arm next to a river, the linguist Javier Bravo Magaña reconstructs a Classical Nahuatl *Ācollimān, derived from a compound of ātl (“water”) +‎ acolli (literally “shoulder”) +‎ -mān (locative suffix). Magaña identifies the attested form Collimān as a shortened variant derived via apheresis of the initial /a/, a phonetic shift also observed in other Nahuatl toponyms. In toponyms, acolli is used metaphorically to describe the bending of a nearby river; thus, the toponym *Ācollimān would roughly mean "the place where the water twists" or "the place of the river bend". The historian Ernesto Terríquez Sámano supports this theory further by positing that the "bent arm" glyph is actually a hydrographic map of the Armería River at Caxitlán (the capital city of Collimān), where it makes a distinct elbow-like turn.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /koˈlima/ [koˈli.ma]
• Rhymes: -ima
• Syllabification: Co‧li‧ma

Proper noun

Colima f

1. a city and state of Mexico.

Derived terms

• colimense
• colimeño
• mochuelo de Colima

Turkish

Proper noun

Colima

1. a city and state of Mexico.