Pochtlan (MH525r)

Pochtlan was a place famous for its long-distance merchants, the Pochteca. Thus, the place name and the ethnic affiliation came to be equated with the occupation of long-distance merchant (pochtecatl), according to James Lockhart in The Nahuas.

In Nahua culture, the word tianquiztli was the word frequently used for the marketplace. This term also applied to a constellation, which may have been owing to some coincidence of shape between the standard marketplace and the arrangement of the stars (citlalin) that made up the constellation. Many glyphs for tianquiztli include footrpints, which can have a semantic reading of people in movement in a busy place such as a market. But footprints in those glyphs also provide the -quiz- (from quiza, to emerge) phonetic complement to tianquiztli. Here, if Pochtlan has footprints in the marketplace, they are very stylized and difficult to see as footprints, helping prevent the literal reading of Tianquizco.

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.