Mexi (MH569r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Mexi (or Mexih, with the glottal stop), which is another name for Huitzilopochtli (as explained in our Online Nahuatl Dictionary entry for Mexi). Chimalpahin (1997, 1:69) says a younger brother of Moctecuhzoma was named Mexi. Either way, this was a powerful name. It became the ethnic label, attested here as a man’s name, and it shows the head of a man in profile, facing toward the viewer's right. He has a bald spot on the crown of his head. Note how this compares to the long hair on other examples of Mexi and Mexicatl.
Stephanie Wood
The difference between the long hair of another Mexi glyph (below) and the hair with a bald spot on this one is intriguing. The bald spot is reminiscent of a friar, which makes one wonder whether Mexi was becoming conflated with priest and beginning to show the fusion of the concept of a Nahua priest with that of a European priest.
Another ethnic label for someone from this basin is Anahuacatl, although that was used sometimes to refer to people in the coastal areas (in other words, also near the water). See the glyph below.
Stephanie Wood
Juā mexi
Juan Mexi
Stephanie Wood
1560
origins, orígenes, etnicidades, ethnicities, capitalinos, ciudad de México, Mexica, hairstyle, cabello, calvo, balding
Mexih, a person affiliated with Mexico City, and another name for Huitzilopochtli, taken as an ethnic name by the migrants who were carrying him and settling Mexico-Tenochtitlan, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/Mexih
Mexi, Mexih, Mexicatl, Nahua, o Mexicano
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 569r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=217&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).
