Teohua (MH565r)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Teohua (“Possessor of Divinity,” attested here as a man’s name) shows a vertical stone (tetl), which provides the phonetic start to the name. The stone has the usual curling ends and curving, diagonal stripes. Above the stone is a profile view of a bald head with a face. This seems to point to the divinity (teotl) implied in the name. The culmination of the name, a -hua possessive indicator, is not shown visually.
Stephanie Wood
The teotl (divinity, spirit) of the Codex Mendoza is half of the symbol for tonatiuh, the sun, something that underlines a place for the sun in Nahua religion. By two decades later, in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco, teotl is appearing fairly regularly with an anthropomorphic head and/or face. This suggests some influence from Christianity. But, the use of stone (tetl) as the phonetic indicator for start to the name, Te-, is interesting here, where there may be an avoidance on the part of the tlacuilo to draw something divine from an Indigenous perspective, not wanting to call attention to such a thing and upset the colonial clergy.
Stephanie Wood
peo. teoua
Pedro Teohua
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
deidades, deities, divinidades, divinities, divine forces, possessive, stripes, curling
teo(tl), divinity or spirit, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/teotl
-hua (a singular possessive suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/hua
El Poseedor de Divinidad
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 565r, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=209&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).
