Chinantlan (Mdz46r)

The maize plant here is a testimonial of the fertility of chinampas. It does not have a phonetic role in this glyph, only iconographic. It is very typical to have the colors of the cobs vary, usually one yellow, one red, with contrasting colors for tassels. It is also customary to find the two hash marks on the cobs, possibly making them face-like. See below, right, for other maize plants that do enter into place names.

Chinampas were an especially popular type of agriculture around the lakeshores of the basin of Mexico. They are still found in Xochimilco and San Gregorio Atlapulco, among other places at the southern end of Mexico City. Mud from the lake bottom would be piled onto the plots, and the sides of the plots were reinforced with wood.

Below, right, we show how the plots of the chinamitl (stem: chinan-) look very much like the tlalli, milli, and even the ixtlahuatl.

The locative suffix -tlan does not imply abundance the way the -tla (or -tlah, showing the glottal stop) would. It is just "place," as Karttunen points out. The gloss shows that this particular place name ends in -tlan, as does the visual teeth in the glyph.

The visual representation of the tlantli (tooth, teeth) here is the most popular--two, upper, front teeth. But they can be bottom teeth (or inverted), and they can include upper and lower teeth, both inside and sticking out from another element. See below, right, for a few examples. Regarding the interpretation about the Chinanteca, I believe the -teca postposition would come from Chinantlan, not the other way around. In other words, the Chinanteca are the people of Chinantlan.