So you've decided to join Ancient Worlds as a Maya in the Americas region - welcome! Now you're faced with the not-as-daunting-as-it-looks task of making your home your own. First question - what should you call your new abode? Unfortunately there aren't many room names available in Mayan, but don't despair, there's always an alternative! If you'd prefer to simply call it home, check out Topi's post here - a few additions to his list would be otot and na.

That, for the time being, is the easy list to choose from, but maybe you want something a little more personalized? That's not too hard either, with the addition of an adjective or two you'll be fixed up in no time. For instance, I call the entrance to my home "Chak Na". Chak can be translated as either "great" or "red" - both of which work with my home and that makes my entrance either "Great House" or "Red House". So where do you find these adjectives? Try taking a peek at these two sites - the first is a vocabulary list from MostlyMaya.com (the same site referenced in Topi's post), the second is the FAMSI site - in specific a searchable database of Mayan vocabulary taken from John Montgomery's Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs (which can also be purchased from amazon.com). Now you've got your adjective and your noun, but what order do you put them in? This part is easy too - the adjective attachs directly in front of the noun (as per Reading the Maya Glyphs by Michael D. Coe & Mark Van Stone). And there you go - your own personalized name for your home!

After perusing the site for a bit, you might notice that some members have customized names for all of their rooms - but how did they manage to change it, there's no option for it when you edit your other rooms? Well, used to be you did have an edit box, but no worries, there's a way around that. Check out this tip from the Arachne group here - that gives you a way to change the name of the other rooms of your house. Great! But now you're back to the question of what to call them. A suggestion for that might be to figure out what content you intend on putting in each room and then designing the name around that. For instance, my courtyard is where I have some quetzal info along with two adopted quetzals from Acol's Quetzal Adoption Agency so I've named that room "Te' Na" which translates to "tree house". My library is called "Wayb'il" which translates as ancestrial shrine - this room will have info on my pseudo Kalak'mul ancestry. So really, the sky's the limit when it comes to naming your other rooms.

Hope this was helpful and have fun with your home!