Huitzilatl (MH525r)

Huitzilatl (MH525r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Huitzilatl (here, attested as a man’s name) shows a frontal view of a plant--perhaps a plant with thorns (huitztli--and five streams of water (atl) coming out from under the plant. Each stream ends in a droplet or bead.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

The presence of either an "l" or even a double "ll," as the gloss appears to have, would suggest that the root could be huitzilin, hummingbird. But the visual elements of the glyph do not include a hummingbird. The person who bears this name seems to have been named after an illustrious autonomous-era person, the grandson of Huitzilihuitl, ruler of Tenochtitlan, called Huitzillatzin (spelled with a double l).

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

juan huitzillatl

Gloss Normalization: 

Juan Huitzilatl

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Huexotzinco, Matrícula de (MH)
Date of Manuscript: 

1560

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Huejotzingo, Puebla

Semantic Categories: 
personal name
Syntax: 
noun(s)
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Animals, incl. Birds, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, etc.
Gender (male)
Names (personal and/or theonym)
Politics, Power, Governance
Religion (Indigenous)
Water
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Colors: 
black & white drawing (no color)
Shapes and Perspectives: 
circle(s) (small, often concentric)
frontal view
spiky
vertical, upright
Parts (compounds or simplex + notation): 
2
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
downward
Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 

Huitzillatzin, an autonomous-era ruler of Huitzilopochco, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huitzillatzin
huitzil(in), hummingbird, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huitzilin
huitz(tli), thorns, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huitztli
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

Colibrí-Agua (?)

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 525r, World Digital Library.
https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=129

Image Source, Rights: 

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).

Historical Contextualizing Image: 
See Also: 

Huitzilatl (MH634r)