Kan is the fourth of the twenty day signs of the Tzolk'in, the 260-day sacred count of the Maya, kept by living daykeepers and reconstructed for the Classic period. Recorded here by its Yucatec name, Kan, it corresponds to the day known in the living K'iche' tradition as K'at. The Yucatec Kan carries the imagery of the seed, the ripe maize, and abundance, fertility and the maturing of what was sown, while the K'iche' K'at adds the image of the net that gathers. It is a sign of ripeness, increase, and the fruitful ordering of life. In the directional scheme that runs through the twenty signs it belongs to the south and the colour yellow. These are the meanings the Maya calendrical tradition carries for the day, presented as that living and reconstructed tradition frames them.
Kan is the fourth of the twenty Tzolk'in day signs; the living K'iche' tradition knows the corresponding day as K'at, a name generally glossed as net or netting, distinct from the Yucatec Kan's own association with seeds and ripeness, an example of how the colonial Yucatec day names and the living highland K'iche' names, while corresponding positionally within the same 260-day count, do not always share a single underlying meaning. In the directional scheme carried by the twenty signs, Kan belongs to the south and the colour yellow, the direction associated across Mesoamerican cosmology with maturity and abundance, consistent with the Yucatec name's own harvest and seed imagery. The day closes the first four-day directional set that begins with Imix, after which the East-red, North-white, West-black, South-yellow sequence repeats through all twenty signs.