Chical (MH500v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Chical (here, attested as a man’s name) shows a round, spiny cactus, perhaps a biznaga or a nochtli. It has two, curving, vertical lines that suggest some three-dimensional shape to the sphere. It also has a short stem at the base of the sphere. The name Chical may be short for chicalotl, a thorny plant.
Stephanie Wood
Thorny plants have a draw for their potential as having spines that could be used in bloodletting. On manuscripts painted in colors, such spines will often be red and white, with the red sometimes giving the suggestion of blood.
Stephanie Wood
Sanctos
chical
Santos Chical
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
cactus, cacti, prickly pear, nopalli, espinas, spines, thorns
chicalo(tl), a thorny plant, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/chicalotl
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 500v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=80&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).