Huitznahuac (MH632r)
This black-and-white painting of the simplex glyph for the personal name Huitznahuac ("Near the Thorns") is attested here as a man's name. The gloss shows a single, vertical thorn that is gray at the tip, black in the middle, and white in the bottom half. The dark color might have been red (for blood) if this glyph could have been painted in color. The -nahuac (near) or -nahua (from language or pleasant sound) part of the name is not shown visually. Interestingly, Huitznahuac is typically a place name. Perhaps this name is actually meant to be Huitznahuacatl, with the affiliation suffix (-catl) having been dropped inadvertently.
Stephanie Wood
The huitztli (thorn) was used in self-sacrificial bloodletting, and so it played an important religious role in Nahua culture. Bloodletting also has an association with human sacrificial offerings, as M. Graulich writes in an article in Estudios de Cultural Náhuatl 36 (2005), "Autosacrifice in Ancient Mexico."
Stephanie Wood
Juan
vitznava
Juan Huitznahuac (or perhaps Huitznahua)
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
huitz(tli), thorn, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huitztli
nahua(tl), pleasant sound or speech, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nahuatl
-nahuac (locative suffix), near or next to, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/nahuac
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 632r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=346st=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).
