Ixtlil (MH901r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Ixtlil (perhaps “Dark Face”) is attested here as a man’s name. The glyph shows an eye (ixtli) in the shape of the older “starry” or “stellar” eye that could double as a star in the sky. But the lower half of the round eye is filled in with black (tlilli) paint.
Stephanie Wood
The literal translation of Black Eye, or Ojo Morado in Spanish, might be incorrect in pointing to a lesion. The name Ixtlil could be a short version of the name Ixtlilxochitl, a famous name in early Nahua history associated with Tetzcoco. Of course, both that famous name (two people, actually) and this more humble Ixtlil may well refer to the divine force of medicine, Ixtlilton, who wore a black mask on his face and divined using a black obsidian mirror. In fact, Alonso de Molina translates ixtliltic, the adjective, as being dark in the face.
Stephanie Wood
po yxtlil
Pedro Ixtlil
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
cara morena, ojos, color negro, nombres de hombres

ix(tli), eye, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ixtli
tlil(li), black color, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlilli
ixtliltic, dark complexioned, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ixtliltic
posiblemente, Rostro Moreno
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 901r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=874&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).
