Becerra (contemporary)

This is a twenty-first century compound Nahuatl hieroglyph for the personal surname Becerra. It consists of three phonetic elements. First is the face of a wrinkled old man (huehue) painted orange or terracotta. The face is shown in profile view, facing to the right. One of his (few) teeth is protruding. He has a white beard, also a sign of his age. On top of his forehead is a corncob (centli) from which a turquoise blue stream of water (atl) emanates all the way to the back of the head of the old man, spilling at the bottom left of it. The water has wavy lines of current (suggesting movement) and five short splashes with a white droplet or bead at the tip of each one. These phonetic elements (hue + cen + a) combine into a phonographic rendition of the surname Becerra. The glyph was made on amate paper and it was colored with dyes made from cochineal, Mayan blue (made by the master artisan Luis May Ku), zacatlaxcalli, gypsum, and black acrylic ink. With the exception of the acrylic ink, all of these materials were used as colorants in pre-Hispanic codices.