Maya · maya
Picture a people who cut a date into a stone wall and whose can still read it. That is the centre of this word: the Maya, the people of the Yucatan and of Central America, who built cities and , watched the sky, and wrote things down — and who did not stop, because millions of them farm, trade and teach in those same places today. From that one picture the word turns two ways without changing its meaning: point it at one person and you get a Maya, point it at what they speak and you get Maya, the language.
From the word’s history
English took the word through Spanish maya. The Spanish word comes from Yucatec Maya: either mayab, meaning flat, or maaya, a name the northern Maya used for themselves, seen in phrases such as maya wiinik, a Maya man.
英文的 Maya 是經由西班牙文 maya 進來的。西班牙文的來源是猶加敦馬雅語：一種說法是 mayab（平坦的），另一種說法是馬雅人北部族群自稱的 maaya，在 maya' wiinik（馬雅人）這種詞組裡看得到。所以這個名字有可能本來就是他們對自己的稱呼。
Wiktionary, "Maya" (etymology 1)