The full name of the city and municipality is Santo Domingo Tehuantepec. "Tehuantepec" comes from Nahuatl and has been generally regarded to mean "wild animal (tecuani) hill (tepec)". The name was given to the area by the Aztecs, purportedly because of the ferocity of the native Zapotec warriors they encountered there. The Zapotec name for the area is Guie-Ngola, or Large Hill/Rock, with the city name being Guisi’si Gui. Santo Domingo was added by Bartolomé de las Casas as he passed by in honor of the Dominican church was had already been established here. From pre Hispanic times, the settlement has been represented by an Aztec glyph, the earliest example of which comes from the Guevea Codex, also known as the Zapotec Codex. This glyph represents a hill with a jaguar, an ancient totem animal throughout MesoAmerica. Thus, the "wild animal" component of the hill's name may actually be related to a recognition of an ancient religious meeting site associated with the symbol of the jaguar. The Nahuatl word "tehuan" actually means "among the people" or "a gathering", i.e. a meeting place.