Chicon (MH537r)

What is curious is whether the number in this man's name was once accompanied by a calendrical day sign. Chicomacatl is a popular name, for example. It combines the number seven with the day sign of acatl (reed/cane). The ceramic piece here is not a day sign. It is also curious that it would be seen as necessary to reinforce the -con ending on the number. There is one other example, however (see below).

As calendrical names evolved, it was more common to see the number drop away and the day sign remain. Macuil may be another name like Chicon. It may have started out as Macuilxochitl or Macuilquiyauh, etc., and then it became apocopated. Regardless of a possible omission here, calendrics still figured importantly in Nahuas' religious views of the cosmos in 1560.

If the day name that accompanied the number in this name was dropped to disguise the continuing use of the calendar, it may represent an attempt to avoid trouble with the colonial clergy. Serious events in 1539 may have made Nahua tlacuilos more cautious when writing and painting about aspects of their faith even twenty-one years later. See Patricia Lopes Don for information about the Inquisition case against don Carlos Ometochtli, a Chichimecatecuhtli (or Chichimecateuctli) executed in late 1539, in Bonfires of Culture, 2010. Bradley Benton (The Lords of Tetzcoco, 2017, 46) also writes that the case “demonstrates that blatant disregard for Christianity had serious consequences.”