Mimich (MH486v)

Mimich (MH486v)
Simplex Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Mimich ("Fish," attested here as a man's name) shows a vertical fish (michin), head up, mouth and eye open. Suggestions of fins appear outside the body. The body has a line down the middle and suggestions of scales.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

The gloss and the contextualizing image both indicate that this man, Felipe Mimich, had an occupation related to providing the covering for a tobacco tube. The gloss for this name includes a reduplication of the first syllable, but there is no corresponding visual reduplication. Magnus Pharao Hansen defines Mimich as "Little Fish." [See his blog from 2014, "Nahuatl Names: The Nahuatl names in the 1544 census of Morelos."] There is a Mimich, for which this man may have been named, who was a Cloud Serpent paired with Xiuhnel and associated with hunting. And the translators of the Primeros Memoriales say that Xiuhnel and Mimich were prominent figures in many migration stories of central Mexican cultures. See the Sullivan and Nicholson edition of the PM (1997, 135).

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

filipe mimich tlapepecho

Gloss Normalization: 

Felipe Mimich, tlapepecho

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Huexotzinco, Matrícula de (MH)
Date of Manuscript: 

1560

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Huejotzingo, Puebla

Syntax: 
noun(s)
reduplication (in gloss/text)
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Animals, incl. Birds, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, etc.
Fire, Tobacco, Incense, Smoke
Gender (male)
Mouth/Beak Open
Names (personal and/or theonym)
Religion (Indigenous)
Weather, Climate
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Colors: 
black & white drawing (no color)
Shapes and Perspectives: 
vertical, upright
Keywords: 

fish, peces, pez, pescado, hunting, cazar, Serpientes de las Nubes, Cloud Serpents

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 

mimich, fish, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/mimich.

Image Source: 

Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 486v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=45&st=image.

Image Source, Rights: 

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).

Historical Contextualizing Image: