Ayaquica (Verg39r)

Ayaquica (or Ayac Ica) is a common name in this digital collection, appearing at least nine times in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco, and with this example, crossing regions. The iconography of these hieroglyphs includes three men with tears on their cheeks and four men who appear to be nude, which tends to be the case when someone is in a vulnerable situation. (Search the Cultural Content category “nudity” for other examples.) Something worth tracking is how one of the Ayaquica examples is an adult woman’s head, and yet this is the name for a man. One can also see other examples of this by searching the Cultural Content category, “Names (men’s but with female dimension).” A few examples of Ayaquica hieroglyphs appear below. None of them are fully phonetic like this one. This Tetzcocan manuscript has much more phoneticism than the Huexotzincan manuscript from 1560, which could be a regional and/or temporal difference.

This name--if deciphered correctly--is a complete sentence whereby the verb (to be) is implied, something very common in Nahuatl alphabetic and hieroglyphic writing. This sentence also includes a preposition (with, ica) and an indefinite pronoun (no one, ayac). Perhaps it is another way of referring to an orphan, a widow, or a widower.

A Google search of Ayaquica will bring up many names of people of Mexican heritage alive today. Some readers have suspected that this is a Quechua name from South America, and if it proves to be true, that will just be a coincidence, because it is definitely a Nahua name.