Ocotepec (Mdz32r)
This compound glyph for the place name Ocotepec features two key elements. One is the pine torch tree (ocotl), which here resembles a standard tree [cuauhui(tl)] with terracotta-colored bark, a leader and two side branches, two-tone green foliage, and two diagonal, black stripes (tlilcuahuitl) of two different thicknesses on the trunk. In other representations, this pine tree has pine cones, but not here. Below the tree is the standard hill or mountain glyph (tepetl), with its two-tone green bell shape, red and yellow stripes near the base, and curling, rocky outcroppings on each of the two slopes. The locative suffix (-c) (as given in the gloss) is not shown visually, but it combines with -tepe- to form -tepec, a visual locative suffix meaning "on the hill" or "on the mountain."
Stephanie Wood
Often, with a single item atop a hill or mountain, one is unsure whether to pluralize the noun. Here's the consensus among English-speaking scholars has been to pluralize pines, whereas Ocotepec is "Hill of the Jaguar" (singular). A community known for the pine torch tree would likely have many of them around it. That could be true of jaguars, too. So, there is a flexibility.
Stephanie Woo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
One might have counted the black stripes as an element if they provided a phonetic reinforcement of the tree as cuahuitl, but here the tree is the ocotl.
mountains, hills
oco(tl), pine torch tree, fatwood pine, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ocotl
tepe(tl), hill or mountain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepetl
-tepec (locative suffix), on the hill or mountain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tepec
"On the Hill of Pines" (agreeing with Berdan and Anawalt) [Frances Karttunen, unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]
"On the Hill of Pines" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, p. )
"En el Cerro de los Ocotes" o "En la Montaña de los Ocotes"
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 32 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 74 of 188.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).
