Axocopan (Osu36r)
This painted compound Nahuatl hieroglyph represents the place name Axocopan (possibly, "On the Little Plum Tree Water"). It features a little plum tree (xocotl) with three visible fruits in yellow-orange color, surrounded by green leaves. This tree has a vertical brown trunk that stands in swirling water, suggestive of movement. Below the water is a green bell-shaped hill or mountain with the horizontal red and yellow lines at its base that are suggestive of a site where a natural spring could emerge, which appears in several examples in this collection. This tepetl does not hold a literal place in the toponym, but it could be a visual locative, a relevant landscape feature, or suggest that this is a town (altepetl, socio-political unit, ethnic state).
Stephanie Wood
There is a tart beverage called axocotl, apparently made from maize (follow the link to our dictionary). The difference in translations between Karttunen and Berdan is partly owing to the effort to translate the bitter fruit as an adjective for the water. But Frances Karttunen explains: "If it were 'bitter water', I would anticipate xococ rather than xoco, and also the opposite order of constituents. If it were the wintergreen, I would expect Axocopacpan." Thus, we embrace the fruit of the tree as giving the place its name. It was probably a place where this fruit could be obtained.
Stephanie Wood
Axocopan
Stephanie Wood
1551–1565
Jeff Haskett-Wood
fruta, frutas, árbol, árboles, agua, remolino, remolinos, nombres de lugares, topónimos, place names
axoco(tl), a sour beverage, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/axocotl
xoco(tl), fruit or, more specifically, a native plum tree, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xocotl
apan(tli), water channel or canal, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/apantli
pan(tli), furrow, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pantli
-apan (locative suffix), on the water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/apan-0
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
-pan (locative suffix), on, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pan
"Axocotl Place" [Frances Karttunen, unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]
"On the Bitter Water" or "On the Creeping Wintergreen" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, p. 173)
"Lugar de los Axocotes"
Stephanie Wood
Library of Congress Online Catalog and the World Digital Library, Osuna Codex, or Painting of the Governor, Mayors, and Rulers of Mexico, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_07324/. The original is located in the Biblioteca Nacional de España.
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