Ayotlan (Mdz47r)
This simplex glyph of a turtle [ayotl) or āyōtl), recognizing the vowel lenghs] stands for the place name Ayotlan. The visual is of its underside, as though the viewer were underneath it, looking up, watching it swim or walk. It is facing to the viewer's right. Its head, legs, and tail are all a purple/brown, and its shell is a golden yellow, with some purple/brown reinforcing the black line drawings that capture the character of the shell. Its one visible eye is white. The locative suffix -tlan is not visual.
Stephanie Wood
The gloss does provide the locative suffix -tlan and not -tla (or -tlah, if we recognize the glottal stop), so we are favoring -tlan, even though it is not represented visually. Thus, this is not a place of an abundance of turtles, but it is a place where there are turtles.
Stephanie Wood
ayotlan. puo
Ayotlan, pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
turtles, tortoises, tortugas
-tlan (locative suffix), place, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlan
"Turtle Place" [Frances Karttunen, unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]
"Where There Are Many Turtles" (Berdan and Anawalt, vol. 1)
Codex Mendoza, folio 47 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 104 of 188.
Original manuscript is held by the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1; used here with the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0)
