Temocihui (MH555v)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Temocihui (“Importune Person” or "He is Annoying," attested here as a man’s name) shows several elements that connect closely to the face of the tribute payer himself, including three speech scrolls, two footprints, and perhaps a jaw with three teeth.
Stephanie Wood
The speech scrolls are likely a semantic indicator for the name "Temocihui," which refers to an importune person, someone who says things that are improper or upsetting to others. The footprints apparently serve as a phonetic indicator for the first part of the name, Temo-, from the verb to descend, even though the footprints go upward. If the third element is a jaw with teeth, this could be a phonetic complement for the syllable "ten," from tentli, lip, mouth, or jaw.
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
pedro temocihui
Pedro Temocihui
Stephanie Wood
1560
walking, andando, bajando, going down, lip, labio, edge, borde, speak, hablar, volutas, nombres de hombres

temocihui, an importune person, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/temocihui
temo, to go down, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/temo
ten(tli), lip, edge, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tentli
cin(tli), dried maize kernels still on the cob, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cintli
Persona Importuna
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 555v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=190&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).
