Mayas generally gave names to objects and places by ONOMATOPOEIA; that is, according to sounds produced by these objects, or to the ideas suggested by their most predominent characteristic.
The word "MAYAB" is a "sieve". Why did the Maya give that name to their country??
One can only surmise that they called it so from the great absorbent quality of its stony soil, which in an incredible short time absorbs the water at the surface. This water percolating through the pores of the stone, is afterward found filtered, clear and cool in the senotes and caves, where it forms vast deposits.
Mayach (That is, "The Land that first arose from the bottom of the deep") was the name of the empire whose sovereings bore the title CAN (serpent) spelt to-day KHAN in Asiatic countries.
The title given by the Mayas to their rulers, was derived from the countour of the empire, that of a serpent with inflated breast, which they represented in their sculptures sometimes with and sometimes without wings, just as the Egyptians did the Uraeus, symbol of their country.
Also by their name, Maya, given to the Banana Tree, symbol of their country, whose broad leaf is yet a token of hospitality.
Diego de Cogolludo informs us that up to AD 1517, (when the Spaniards for the time invaded that country), the land of the mayas was still designated as "The Great Serpent" and "The Tree".
Could the true etymology of the word Maya possibly be: 'The mother of the waters" or the teats of the waters ma-y-a - she of the 400 breasts, as they were wont to represent the Ephesian Goddess.
Maya Sages had reached similar conclusions, since they called their country MAYACH, that is 'The land first emerged from the bosom of the deep", "the country of the shoot"; and the Egyptians, according to Herodotus, boasted that "their ancestors in the lands of the west, were the oldest men on earth".