Tecocohua (MH515r)

Tecocohua (MH515r)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This black-line drawing of the compound glyph that stands for the personal name Tecocoa (also seen as Tecocohuatl, Tecocohua, and Tecocoatl) possibly means "Someone Ill" or "Someone in Pain." The glyph here shows a man's head (perhaps standing for the Te- of someone) with a hand grasping (providing the "hua" phonetic syllable) the throat. The man is shown in profile looking toward the viewer's right. The hand is a right hand, presumably that of another person who is doing the choking, causing pain (tecoco or cocoa).

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

This name was also held by a famous person of Cuauhtitlan at the time of the Spanish invasion. This could be a simplex glyph except for the double duty of the hand, which seems to be the cause of pain but also stands for the possession of pain. Alfonso Lacadena (2008b, 42) discusses the grasping hand sign (in other cases) as standing for "hua" (relating to possession) and serving as a phonetic complement. The resulting meaning of the name may be "One Who Has Pain." If the analysis of the gloss of the name should really point to Tecocoa, with the hua simply as a phonetic indicator, the overall meaning might be something else. For instance, tecoa means "to entrust something to someone else," and Tecocoa could represent a reduplication of that verb.

See Teyahualo, below, for another example of the "grasping hand."

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image:

Gloss Diplomatic Transcription:

pe^o tecocohua

Gloss Normalization:

Pedro Tecocohua

Gloss Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Huexotzinco, Matrícula de (MH)

Date of Manuscript:

1560

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Huejotzingo, Puebla, Mexico

Semantic Categories:

phonetic dimensions

personal name

Syntax:

hua (grasping hand)

indefinite "te"

reduplication (in gloss/text)

Writing Features:

compound of phonogram(s) & logogram(s)

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Anatomy, human body parts

Emotions

Gender (male)

Health, Medicine

Names (personal and/or theonym)

Sensory Perception

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

black & white drawing (no color)

Shapes and Perspectives:

facing right

profile view

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

inherent/internal/merged

Keywords:

pain, dolor, estrangular, personas malas, personas dañosas, Tecocohua and Tecocohuatl variant

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

Tecocohua, someone who is ill or in pain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tecocohua
te- (nonspecific human object prefix), someone, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/te
cocoa, to be in pain or cause someone pain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cocoa
tecocoani, something that stings and hurts, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tecocoani
tecoco, something causing pain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tecoco
hua, grasping, possessing, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/hua

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

Él Que Sufre Dolores

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 515r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=109&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: