Chicomaca (MH559r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph and notation for the personal name Chicomaca (“Seven-Reed” or "7-Reed," attested here as a man’s name) shows a horizontal cane reed (acatl) above a horizontal group of six small circles with two additional small circles coming down from the middle of those. The number of circles or counters adds up to eight, not seven (chicome). The reed is segmented like bamboo, and two small curving leaves come off the reed.
Stephanie Wood
This day sign comes from the tonalpohualli, the 260-day divinatory calendar. Calendrics figure importantly in Nahuas' religious views of the cosmos.
The gloss may be in error, or the scribe made an error in the number of circles he drew, considering that the number of counters shown differs from the number indicated in the gloss. This may be indicative of the fading ability to produce calendrical glyph names that have both the glyph and the notation drawn with precision. The numbers were dropping away, as can be seen with the Ce-Acatl name, below, and the Calli names without even a glossed number. The colonial clergy may have tried to suppress calendrical names, given their association with divinatory codices and the Indigenous religious beliefs. Or, there could have been some self-censorship in the colonial context. But calendrical naming did continue, even as it evolved.
If not specifically referring to the calendar, the name can also refer to a medicinal herb called chicomacatl, which probably still also has associations with the calendar.
Stephanie Wood
Juā . chicomaca .
Juan Chicomaca
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
dates, fechas, calendarios, plants, plantas, reeds, cañas, seven, siete, ocho, eight, Chicomaca
chicome, seven, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/chicome
aca(tl), reed or cane, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acatl
Siete Caña, o 7-Caña
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 559r, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=197&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).