section_path: Etymology
section_name: Etymology
paragraph_text: Etymology
  
  "Maya" is a modern term used to refer collectively to the various peoples that inhabited this area, as Maya peoples have not had a sense of a common ethnic identity or political unity for the vast majority of their history. Early Spanish and Mayan-language colonial sources in the Yucatán Peninsula used the term "Maya" to denote both the language spoken by the Yucatec Maya and the area surrounding the then-abandoned city of Mayapán, from which the term derived. Some colonial Mayan-language sources also used "Maya" to refer to other Maya groups, sometimes pejoratively in reference to Maya groups more resistant to Spanish rule.