Acatl (MH638r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Acatl (“Reed,” or "Cane," attested here as a man’s name) shows a vertical, segmented reed with one long leaf on both the right and left sides. Roots are also just visible at the base of the reed. Acatl is a day name in the 260-day divinatory calendar called the tonalpohualli.
Stephanie Wood
Typically, this calendrical name would have a companion number, but when this person was named perhaps the standard practice was fading away, or perhaps it was suppressed given that the calendar had religious implications that would not have pleased the colonizers. But Acatl was a propitious name.
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
reeds, canes, carrizos, cañas, plantas
aca(tl), reed, cane, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acatl
la caña
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 638r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=358st=image.
This manuscript is hosted by the Library of Congress and the World Digital Library; used here with the Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SAq 3.0).
