Origin and Etymology
Mēxihco was originally the Nahuatl name for the eponymous Valley of Mexico wherein the cities of the Mexica (the proper name for the Aztec Triple Alliance) were located. As such, the district that became Mexico City was properly known as Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the years shortly before and after Spanish conquest. After the Spanish Conquest, the term México came to be used for Tenochtitlan/Mexico City and all the pre-conquest lands it controlled, including several other aforementioned Mexican states originally incorporated in the boundaries of the México state.
There are two possible origins for the name “Mexico.” The first is that it derives from metztli (moon) and xictla (navel) to mean from the navel of the moon. This comes from the old Aztec idea that the craters on the moon form a rabbit figure with one crater imitating a navel. The other possible origin is that it is derived from “Mextictli” an alternate name for the god Huitzilopochtli.
Anáhuac was the proper term for all territories dominated by the Aztec Empire, from Cem Anáhuac, "the entire earth" or "surrounded by waters" e.g. the waters of Lake Texcoco which were considered to be the center of the Aztec world; and as such was proposed as an early name for the entire nation of Mexico prior to independence, to distinguish it from the (preexisting) administrative division of New Spain that became the State of Mexico.
Read more about this topic: State Of Mexico
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—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)