Atotoztli (MH744v)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph of the personal name, Atotoztli (perhaps having something to do with water and yellow parrots) is attested here as a woman’s name. This was a famous name in pre-contact Tenochtitlan, worn for example by the daughter of the first Motecuhzoma, and she may have ruled the Triple Alliance herself for up to thirty years. See Cecelia Klein, Gender in Prehispanic Mexico (2001, 333), for more information about her. The glyph starts with the head of a parrot in profile, facing toward the viewer’s right. The bird’s eye is open, as is its beak. Coming down from the bird’s head are three streams of water, each one with a line of current (movement) down the middle and a droplet at the bottom. The droplets each have a black dot in the center.
Stephanie Wood
This woman in Huexotzinco also had some status, given how she appears inside what may be a teccalli (lordly house). See the contextualizing image. The “Lady Atotoztli” (daughter of Motecuhzoma I) appears in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atotoztli_II) with her compound glyph somewhat different from this one. In that example, two parrot heads appear (a visual reduplication), plus a yellow feather, and three little streams of water. It is not absolutely clear that the water in either of these compounds is logographic, as it could be providing the phonetic indication that the name starts with A-.
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
loros, amarillo, agua, nombres de mujeres, nombres famosos
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
toz(tli), yellow Amazon parrot, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/toztli
Atotoztli, a woman’s name, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atotoztli
posiblemente, Loro Amarillo del Agua
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 744v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=567&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).