Cipac (MH778r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Cipac ("Crocodile" is attested here as a man's name. The glyph shows an S-shape that is covered with what are like nine, long, sharp thorns or flint knives. See the Borgia Codex, Plate 21, for a representation of the animal covered with the red and white knife called the tecpatl. Another Borgia image, Plate 27, of this animal also has flint knives on its body. Mexicolore publishes both of these images.
Stephanie Wood
This simplex glyph it a very stylized representation of crocodile, which can turn and twist, has sharp teeth, and has barbs on its skin.
Cipactli is a day name in the religious divinatory calendar of 260 days, the tonalpohualli. Perhaps this stylized version is meant to disguise that the family who named their baby this were still consulting the calendar, a practice that some friars had hoped to root out. Alternatively, because the crocodile was a double for a the divine force or deity, Tonacatecuhtli, creator of the universe and the human race, this glyph could represent that divine force instead of the crocodile. See Anastasia Kalyuta's article in Mexicolore.
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
animales, cocodrilos, caimanes, nombres de días, calendarios, tonalpohualli, nombres de hombres
cipac(tli), crocodile, caiman, alligator, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cipactli
Cocodrilo
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 778r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=630&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).
