Chicon (MH730r)

This is possibly an apocopation for a name that was once a full calendrical name from the 260-day divinatory calendar, the tonalpohualli. Most likely, the name would have had a day name to accompany the number (such as 7-Ehecatl, or 7-Cipactli, etc.), but the day name has dropped away. Other glyphs for Chicon appear below. These still have a notation of seven dots, but they lack the day name, which this one also lacks.

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.”