Ik is the second of the twenty day signs of the Tzolk'in, the 260-day sacred count kept by Maya daykeepers to this day and reconstructed for the Classic period from the inscriptions. Recorded here by its Yucatec name, Ik, it is known in the living K'iche' tradition as the day Iq'. Its imagery is the wind and the breath, moving air, spirit, and the life-force that animates, and by extension speech and communication. In the older sources Ik is linked to breath and to the wind that brings both the life-giving rains and destructive storms. In the directional scheme that runs through the twenty signs it belongs to the north and the colour white. These are the meanings the Maya calendrical tradition carries for the day, presented as that living and reconstructed tradition frames them.
Ik is the second of the twenty Tzolk'in day signs; the living K'iche' daykeeping tradition of highland Guatemala knows the corresponding day as Iq'. Its imagery is breath and wind, and by extension speech, spirit and the intangible animating force the Maya associated with living things, a sense reflected in the word's shared root across Mayan languages with terms for breath and for spirit generally. In the directional scheme carried by the twenty signs, Ik belongs to the north and the colour white. Because a day sign always combines with one of thirteen numbers to form a unique name within the 260-day count, an Ik day recurs, paired with the same number, only once every 260 days, and a person born on this day is traditionally read by contemporary daykeepers as carrying Ik's association with communication and with the changeable, sometimes turbulent, nature of wind.