Atonal (MH785r)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Atonal is attested here as a man's name. The glyph provides what looks like a flower inside a box for the -tonal (tonalli, sun, day, solar energizing force) part of the name. The "A-" start to the name comes from the water (atl), which comes down in two streams from the boxed sun or day sign. Each stream ends with a circle with a dot in the middle, perhaps a water droplet that doubles as a jade bead. Each stream also contains black lines that suggest current (movement).
Stephanie Wood
The name, Atonal or Atonalztin, would appear to be a calendrical one, perhaps based on the day the man was born. Tonalli not only refers to a day, but also to the sun, to summertime warmth, and heat, according to examples from our Online Nahuatl Dictionary. More than that, the tonalli "was a sort of soul, located in the crown of the head, that regulated body temperature and growth and played a major role in determining a person's character and fate. Tonalli loss resulted in illness and, if healing ceremonies were not performed, death," according to Louise M. Burkhart, Holy Wednesday: A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 190. This is likely a case where a relatively average citizen was given an illustrious calendrical name. The most famous Atonal was a Mixtec ruler. According to Wikipedia, Atonaltzin (in the reverential form of the name in Nahuatl) was also called Dzawindanda by the Mixtecs. He ruled the Mixtec kingdom of Coixtlahuaca. After the first Motecuhzoma took power over Coixtlahuaca, sometime in the second half of the fifteenth century, the Nahuas executed Atonal apparently in revenge for the deaths of a large number of long distance merchants. Maarten Jansen and Gabina Aurora Pérez Jiménez (Time and the Ancestors, 2017, 337) suggest the following meaning for Atonal: "Atonal refers to a person with a calendar name that contained the day sign Water." See below for glyphs of tonalli, in this case representing either the sun or a day. A similar quincunx shape in a box appears in the glyph for Cuilol (also appearing below).
po anthonal
Pedro Atonal
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
nombres de hombres, nombres de personas famosas, agua, día, sol, energía solar, gobernante Mixteco
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
tonal(li), sun, day, personal animating force, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tonalli
Brillo de Agua (?)
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 785r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=644&st=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).
