This glossary accompanies The Annals of the Cakchiquels. It distinguishes the living Kaqchikel language and people from the historical spellings, editorial categories, and translation layers of the 1885 edition.

Kaqchikel — A living Mayan language and the name of the people who speak and carry it. Kaqchikel is distinct from K'iche', Tz'utujil, and other Mayan languages. Use Kaqchikel in current support prose.

Cakchiquel — The historical spelling used in Brinton's title and throughout his 1885 edition. Preserve it in bibliographic titles and quotations; do not assume it is the preferred current form.

Maya / Mayan — “Maya” commonly refers to peoples, cultures, and a broad historical world; “Mayan” commonly describes the language family. Neither term should replace a specific name such as Kaqchikel. Relatedness is not interchangeability.

Xajilá / Xahila — The family name attached to the chronicle and its manuscript tradition. Xahila is Brinton's recurring historical spelling; Xajilá is used in present catalog prose here.

Xajilá family chronicle — The encompassing attribution for the Kaqchikel historical work printed by Brinton. It recognizes family authorship and continuation without forcing uncertain layers under one sole author.

Francisco Hernández Arana Xajilá — A named Kaqchikel writer and continuator cataloged by Project Gutenberg as the principal creator. Brinton argues that Hernández's unnamed father wrote the earlier portion and that Hernández continued the record from 1560 to 1583.

Francisco Díaz Gebuta Quej — A named Kaqchikel contributor whom Brinton identifies as a later continuator after Hernández Arana Xajilá.

Unnamed continuators — Xajilá family members who carried the record before, between, or after the named writers. Their lack of surviving names does not make their authorship Brinton's.

Notarial scribe — The professional Kaqchikel-literate clerk whom Brinton believed copied the surviving family dossier between about 1620 and 1650. A scribe transmits a text and may shape its written form; scribal work is not identical to first composition.

Daniel G. Brinton — Editor and English translator of the 1885 edition; author of its introduction and notes; compiler of its vocabulary and index. He selected what to print, altered aspects of presentation, and relied heavily on earlier mediation. He is not the sole author of the chronicle.

Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg — Nineteenth-century scholar who borrowed the manuscript, made an earlier French version, and carried the original to Europe. Brinton says this version was essential to his own translation even where he disagreed with it.

Juan Gavarrete — Guatemalan archivist and antiquarian who found the manuscript in the San Francisco convent archive in 1844 and later made a Spanish version from Brasseur's French translation.

Título / family title — A documentary and legal form used to record descent, history, land, standing, possessions, privileges, or claims. Brinton understood the larger Xajilá dossier as part of such a legal process. “Title” here means more than a book name.

Complete 1885 edition — All material Brinton published in the Philadelphia volume: preliminary matter, introduction, selected chronicle, notes, vocabulary, and index. It does not mean the complete manuscript dossier.

Selected manuscript witness — Brinton says the manuscript had ninety-six pages, was incomplete at the end, and that he printed forty-eight pages. His edition is therefore complete as an edition but selective as a manuscript witness.

Parallel unit — A numbered chronicle unit for which the edition prints historical Kaqchikel beside Brinton's English. Units 1–164 are parallel.

English-only unit — A unit for which Brinton printed his English translation but omitted the Kaqchikel text. Units 165–185 are English-only.

Partial source-language coverage — A coverage status used when a work supplies substantial direct language evidence but not the whole textual unit it represents. The 164 parallel units support partial Kaqchikel-language coverage; the twenty-one English-only units and Brinton's selection of forty-eight out of ninety-six manuscript pages prevent a complete claim.

Reader coverage — Access sufficient for a reader to traverse the published historical-literary work through translation. The 185 translated units support reader coverage for this Kaqchikel historical-literary witness, not for all Kaqchikel literature.

Colonial orthography — Alphabetic spelling practices developed under colonial conditions for writing Kaqchikel. They preserve valuable language evidence while also reflecting missionary alphabets, scribal practice, and later editorial choices.

Parra signs — Special historical phonetic characters associated with the missionary Francisco de la Parra. Gutenberg represents four recurring signs through PNG images. Good Works preserves those four, a reversed-three example, and a cross as six exact assets with 3,707 ordered inline occurrences.

Correction disclosure — One of forty-nine places where Gutenberg leaves the edition's erroneous or inconsistent visible reading in place and supplies a proposed correction in hover text and in an ending table. Good Works preserves both layers rather than silently repairing the text.

Public domain — A copyright status. Project Gutenberg marks this edition public domain in the United States. Public-domain access does not establish Kaqchikel community endorsement, erase family or territorial relationships, or confer authority over sacred and ceremonial material.

Living community authority — The authority of contemporary Kaqchikel speakers, teachers, writers, families, cultural workers, and institutions over present names, spelling, teaching, pronunciation, practice, and community context. An archival edition can preserve evidence; it cannot replace this authority.