Ecatl (MH737v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name (“Air,” “Breath,” or “Wind”) is attested here as a man’s name. It builds onto the tribute payer’s own head by adding the blowing device buccal mask that is associated with the divine force of the wind, Ehecatl, which is also a day name and therefore a common personal name for families that consulted the religious divinatory calendar, tonalpohualli.
Stephanie Wood
A great many glyphs in this collection start with Eca- when Ehecatl is expected, given the iconography. The gloss here gives "Hecatl," but the visuals suggest "Ehecatl." We are recognizing the possibility of an unintentional oral abbreviation of Eheca- to Eca- (or Heca-). 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 mainly for outsiders.
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
aliento, aire, viento, deidades, fuerzas divinas, calendarios, nombres de días, nombres de hombres
eca(tl), air, breath, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ecatl
eheca(tl), wind, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ehecatl
Ehecatl
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 737v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=553&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).
