Cuicuitzcatl (MH510r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Cuicuitzcatl (here, attested as a man's name) shows a bird, likely a barn swallow (cuicuitzcatl), in profile looking toward the viewer's left. It has a long beak (closed), and its visible eye seems open. Its wing is closed, and the wing feathers do not reach all the way to the bottom of the bird's chest. Its tail feathers are somewhat distinguishable.
Stephanie Wood
There was a famous Cuicuitzcatl who became the emperor of the Acolhua and was the younger brother of Cacama, according to Burr Cartwright Brundage in A Rain of Darts: The Mexica Aztecs (2014), also known as the lord of Colhuacan according to Torquemada (1615), who says he became this leader at the behest of Motecuhtzoma. The man bearing this name in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco, Diego Cuicuitzcatl, was probably a macelhualli, not a figure of high social status.
See our Online Nahuatl Dictionary for some discussion of this bird. One concern is that the Florentine Codex says the barn swallow has a short beak, and this bird does not. Another cuicuitzcatl in this collection has its wings raised. That one has an even longer beak.
Stephanie Wood
diego
cuicuitzcatl
Diego Cuicuitzcatl
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
barn swallows, golondrinas, nombres de hombres
![](https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Cuicuitzcatl_MH510r_SimplexPersName.png?itok=lU4Wjhsh)
cuicuitzca(tl), barn swallow, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuicuitzcatl
La Golondrina
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 510r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=99&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).
![](https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/sites/default/files/Cuicuitzcatl_MH510r_Context.png)