Huitznahuac (Mdz19r)
This compound glyph for the place name Huitznahuac ("Near the Thorns") contains two principal elements, a vertical thorn or spine (huitztli), painted turquoise blue and red, with its point down. The spine has additional thorns running up its left side. It also has an open, toothless mouth from which a turquoise blue speech scroll emerges (toward the viewer's right). The scroll calls forth the noun nahuatl), for speech, language, agreeable sounds.
Stephanie Wood
Este glifo compuesto utilizado para designar el topónimo Huitznahuac (“Cerca de las espinas”) contiene dos elementos principales: una espina (huitztli) vertical de color azul turquesa y rojo con la punta hacia abajo y espinas adicionales en su costado izquierdo; y una boca abierta y desdentada de la cual surge una voluta de la palabra de color azul turquesa hacia la derecha del espectador. La voluta indica el sustantivo nahuatl, que significa habla, lengua o sonidos agradables.
The speech element is actually a phonetic indicator meant to point to the locative, -nahuac, near or next to. This locative probably refers to a place where maguey spines or thorns were plentiful. The thorn (huitztli) can be colored red for blood, given that thorns were used for bloodletting and for cutting people who were being punished. The turquoise color may be an indication of preciosity. Incidentally, Huitznahuatl, literally "Thorn Speech," is a title that was held by a dignitary, as shown on folio 66 recto of the Codex Mendoza. The glyph for his title is just the same as this one.
John Bierhorst (A Nahuatl-English Dictionary and Concordance to the Cantares Mexicanos, 1985, 143) says that Huitznahuatl was a "name or epithet of a god to whom slaves were sacrificed in Mexico." Other sources report that one of the ethnic groups that migrated from the Seven Caves came from a place called Huitznahuac, and there was a temple with this association in Mexico Tenochtitlan. Finally, Huitznahuatl was a high title, and it had an association with the South. The name was not inaccessible for tribute-paying men of humble means, such as some individuals found in the sixteenth-century census of modern-day Morelos and in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco (1560) of modern-day Puebla. See the Online Nahuatl Dictionary for more information about Huitznahuac and Huitznahuatl.
Stephanie Wood
En realidad, el elemento del habla es un indicador fonético que apunta al locativo -nahuac, “cerca” o “junto a”, el cual probablemente se refiere a un lugar con abundancia de espinas de maguey. Las espinas (huitztli) pueden colorearse de rojo para indicar la sangre, ya que se utilizaban para el sangrado ritual y para perforar a las personas que sufrían algún castigo. El color turquesa podría indicar su gran valor. Recuérdese también que Huitznahuatl (“Habla de Espinas”) era el título de un dignatario, como se ve en el anverso del folio 66 del Códice Mendocino: el glifo de dicho título es idéntico al del presente ejemplo.
John Bierhorst afirma en A Nahuatl-English Dictionary and Concordance to the Cantares Mexicanos (1985, p. 143) que Huitznahuatl era “el nombre o epíteto de un dios al que se sacrificaban esclavos en México”, mientras que otras fuentes mencionan que uno de los grupos étnicos que migraron del Lugar de las Siete Cuevas provenía de un sitio llamado Huitznahuac y que había un templo relacionado en México-Tenochtitlan. Recordemos también que Huitznahuatl era un alto cargo asociado con el Sur y que el nombre no era inaccesible para tributarios de sexo masculino y orígenes humildes, tales como algunas personas que aparecen en el censo llevado a cabo en el siglo XVI en el moderno estado de Morelos y en la Matrícula de Huexotzinco (1560) del moderno estado de Puebla. Véase el Online Nahuatl Dictionary para obtener más información sobre Huitznahuac y Huitznahuatl.
huitznahuac
Huitznahuac
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
espinas, espinosa, thorns, spiny, speech, el habla, language, lenguaje, nombres de lugares, fonetismo, place names, topónimos
huitz(tli), thorn, spike, spine, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huitztli
-nahuac (locative suffix), near or next to, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/nahuac
nahua(tl), language/speech, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nahuatl
-c (locative suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/c
"Beside the Large Maguey Spine" (agreeing with Berdan and Anawalt) [Frances Karttunen, unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]
"Near the Thorns" (Gordon Whittaker, Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 103); "Beside the Large Maguey Spine" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, p. 189)
HUITZ•NAHUAC
Cerca de las Espinas
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 19 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 48 of 188.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).
