Mimich (MH490r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Mimich ("Fish," attested here as a man's name) consists of a horizontal fish shown in profile looking to the viewer's right. It has a bifurcated tail and four fins. It has a line drawn the length of the fish and short lines connecting this central line with the edges of the fish.
Stephanie Wood
This is a personal name, preceded in the gloss by a Christian first name (Toribio). He may have been named after Toribio de Benavente, also known as Motolinia ("One Who is Poor or Afflicted"). This was the first word he learned in Nahuatl, and he went on to learn the language well. He lived in the monastery in Huejotzingo. Doing a quick search for the name "Toribio" will produce an impressive result.
While the Nahua name Mimich is reduplicated in the gloss, the visual representation of the fish does not give any visual indication of the reduplication. There is a Mimich, for which this man may have been named, who was a Cloud Serpent paired with Xiuhnel and associated with hunting. Magnus Pharao Hansen defines Mimich as "Little Fish." [See his blog from 2014, "Nahuatl Names: The Nahuatl names in the 1544 census of Morelos."]
Stephanie Wood
thorivio mimich
Toribio Mimich
Stephanie Wood
1560
Stephanie Wood
fish, peces, pescado, Serpientes de las Nubes, Cloud Serpents, hunting, cazar
Mimich, a cloud serpent and divine force associated with hunting, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/Mimich
mich(in), fish, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/michin
El Pececito
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 490r, World Digital Library. https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=59&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).
