Nim Ch'okoj Kaweq

El lingüista k'iche' Sam Colop (2008: 195n333) explica que el Nim Ch'okoj Kaweq es "el 'principal de losmaestros de ceremonias de los Kaweq.' Chokoj conforme al diccionario de Ximénez significa 'boda o convites' y el en Calepino en Lengua Cakchiquel la palabra chokola' se dice que es el cacao que se bebe entre todos, es decir que aunque en este segundo diccionario se utiliza la palabra de origen náhuatl chocolatl se está haciendo referencia a reuniones familiares donde los encargados de dirigirlas eran los chokoj. Al final de Popol Wuj se dice, además, que los transcriptores del manuscrito fueron tres nim chocoh, o sea que además de ser diestros en el lenguaje verban también lo eran en el lenguaje escrito."

Anthropologist Allen J. Christenson (2007: 269n743) identifies the ch'okoj as someone "charged with providing the food and drinks for state functions, as well as making pronouncements and public discourses."Anthropologist Dennis Tedlock (1996: 335), whose translation was produced collaboratively with K'iche' daykeeper Andrés Xiloj, highlights the potentially political play on words with the K'iche' title, one that specifically diverges from the interpretations of other Mesoamerican texts, such as the Título de Totonicapán. According to Tedlock, when the authors name themselves in the text, they "make it clear that the lordly title they give as nim chokoj [nim chocoh], translated here and elsewhere as 'Master of Ceremonies,' is not an error for nim ch'okoj [nim 4chocoh], the spelling given in the Title of the Lords of Totonicapán. Chokoj, which fits the present context, has to do with occasions when people come together to share food and drink" whereas "ch'okoj ... merely refers to the act of sitting down. The authors of the P[opol]V[uh] digress in order to exalt the Masters of Ceremonies, whereas the Totonicapán authors, whatever their political motives may have been, go out of their way to belittle the Master of Ceremonies for the Cauecs. For them, he is not a nim chokoj but a nim ch'okoj, a 'Master of Sitting,' and they go on to describe him as a xa ch'ojojil tem, 'just a sitter on a bench,' a minor official who, they insist, was never given the right to his own lordly domain (Carmack and Mondlock 1983a: 101, 183)." It is worth noting that today, in his modern Spanish-language translation, K'iche' scholar Sam Colop (2008) uses nim ch'okoj to refer to "Mothers and Fathers of the Word," or the "Masters of Ceremonies" discussed here. In the K'iche' edition of the text, however, Colop (1999) uses the spelling "chokoj."