Huitzilihuitl (TK207v)

Huitzilihuitl (TK207v)
Compound Hieroglyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This black-line drawing of a compound Nahuatl hieroglyph represents the personal name Huitzilihuitl (“Hummingbird Feather”), a late fourteenth- and/or early fifteenth-century ruler of Tenochtitlan. This compound has two elements. One is a hummingbird almost standing, in profile, looking to the left. Its head is white, and its beak is somewhat long. Four small feathers, perhaps down feathers, ring the top of its head.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

This glyph is typical in its effort to portray a hummingbird surrounded by small feathers. See some other examples below.

Side Note: The folio numbers are not always clear in the copy published online by the British Museum. Marc Thouvenot gives this page the number K05_B in his TLACHIA digital collection, https://tlachia.iib.unam.mx/tepetlaoztoc/K05_B.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss or Text Image:

Gloss/Text Diplomatic Transcription:

huiçilihuitl

Gloss/Text Normalization:

Huitzilihuitl

Gloss/Text Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Tepetlaoztoc, Codex (aka Kingsborough) (TK)

Date of Manuscript:

c. 1556

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Tepetlaoztoc, East of Lake Tetzcoco

Semantic Categories:

personal name

Syntax:

noun(s)

Writing Features:

compound fully logographic

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Animals: Birds

Feathers

Gender (male)

Names (personal and/or theonym)

Politics, Power, Governance

Social Hierarchy, Commoners, Elites

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Shapes and Perspectives:

profile view

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

upward

Keywords:

plumas, colibríes, pájaro, pájaros, nombres de hombres, nombres de gobernadores, men’s names

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

Huitzilihuitl, a personal name, hummingbird feather; held, for example, by a ruler of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huitzilihuitl
huitzil(in), hummingbird, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huitzilin
ihui(tl), feather, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ihuitl

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

posiblemente, Pluma de Colibrí

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

The Codex Kingsborough, also known as the Códice de Tepetlaoztoc, and the Memorial de los indios de Tepetlaoztoc, is not on display. It was transferred from the British Library and is now held by the British Museum. It is shared on line at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Am2006-Drg-13964

Image Source, Rights:

©The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. Please also cite the <em>Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphsem>, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities Projects, 2020-present) and this URL.

Orthography:

"ç" for z or tz

Historical Contextualizing Image: