Panotlan (Mdz38r)
This compound glyph for the place name Panotlan involves two principal elements. One is a vertical water flow, likely a river. Cutting across the river is a footprint, indicating the verb pano, to cross, cross over, swim across. The locative suffix (-tlan) is not shown visually, but perhaps the landscape provides a semantic locative. The water has the standard white turbinate shells and white water droplets/beads splashing off and the black lines of varying thickness that suggest flow or currents. The footprint is black, although the turquoise blue paint on the river covers the foot somewhat.
Stephanie Wood
The water (atl) does not apparently enter into the phonetic value of the place name; it appears there to help convey the meaning of the verb (pano), of crossing over, as does the foot. Footprint glyphs have a wide range of translations. In this collection, so far, we can attest to yauh, xo, pano, -pan, paina, temo, nemi, quetza, otli, iyaquic hualiloti, huallauh, tepal, tetepotztoca, totoco, otlatoca, -tihui, and the vowel "o." Other research (Herrera et al, 2005, 64) points to additional terms, including: choloa, tlaloa, totoyoa, eco, aci, quiza, maxalihui, centlacxitl, and xocpalli.
Stephanie Wood
panotlan.puo
Panotlan, pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
crossings, cruzar, cruces del río, cruce del río, huellas de pie, footprints
pano, to cross, cross over, swim across, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pano
-tlan (locative suffix), place, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlan
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
"Place of River Fords" (concurring with Berdan and Anawalt) [Frances Karttunen, unpublished manuscript, used here with her permission.]
"Place of River Fords" (Berdan and Anawalt, 1992, vol. 1, 198)
"Donde Se Cruza el Río"
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 38 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 86 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).
