Ecatl (MH525v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Ecatl (“Air” or "Breath," attested here as a man’s name) shows a profile view of the divine force of wind (Ehecatl) with a tube coming out of his mouth. The belief was that this divinity blew wind through a tube. This tube is vaguely reminiscent of a metal, musical horn, and does not resemble the autonomous-era device worn by Ehecatl figures in sculpture, which may suggest European influence.
Stephanie Wood
A great many glyphs in this collection start with Eca- when Ehecatl is expected, given the iconography. The gloss here gives "Ecatl," but the visuals suggest "Ehecatl." We are recognizing the possibility of an unintentional oral abbreviation of Eheca- to Eca-. But, if the shortening of the name is intentional, it may be a response to the edict of 1540 prohibiting the naming of Nahua children after deities that led to a favoring of Ecatl over Ehecatl, as a kind of disguise. See Norma Angélica Castilla Palma, "Las huellas del oficio y lo sagrado en los nombres nahuas de familias y barrios de Cholula," Dimensión Antropológica v. 65 (sept.-dic. 2015), 186. Castilla also mentions how there were pressures to stop using names from the tonalpohualli, and this led to the dropping of the number that went with the day name. Such a number is absent here. So the whole result is a lessening of the sacred aspects, perhaps for outsiders.
Gabrielle Vail and Christine Hernández (Re-Creating Primordial Time, 2013, ) describe Ehecatl as the wind aspect of Quetzalcoatl, and they note that Ehecatl "wears a buccal (duck) mask through which to blow wind." That the "beak" may have been perceived as a blowing device is supported by the glyph for Pitztli (below).
Stephanie Wood
andonio Ecatl.
Antonio Ecatl (or, Ehecatl)
Stephanie Wood
1560
viento, deidades, deities, wind, air, breath
![](https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Ehecatl_MH525v_SmplxPersNameMale.png?itok=bIsnOeFB)
eheca(tl), wind, divine force of wind, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ehecatl
eca(tl), breath, air, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ecatl
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 525v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=130&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/Ehecatl_MH525v_Context.png)