Matlacxochitl (MH905v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Matlacxochitl (“Ten-Flower” or “10-Flower”) is attested here as a man’s name. The glyph shows an upright flower (xochitl) with three visible petals and a base. Touching the top of the flower is a horizontal line, and coming up from that line are ten (matlactli) short vertical black lines.
Stephanie Wood
This is a name taken from the religious divinatory calendar called the tonalpohualli, the day count. There were twenty day names, and xochitl was one. Companion numbers were from 1 to 13. By the date of this manuscript (1560) some people were dropping parts of these calendrical names, whether the day sign or the companion number. They may have been abbreviating or intentionally suppressing part of the name to make it appear less like a calendrical name, given that the clergy were discouraging the use of the pre-contact calendar in colonial times.
Stephanie Wood
buenepantola matlacxochitl
Buenaventura Matlacxochitl
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
calendarios, fechas, números, nombres de días, nombres de hombres
matlac(tli), ten, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/matlactli
xoch(itl), flower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xochitl
Diez-Flor, o 10-Flor
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 905v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=883&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).
