Tetlamachti (MH746v)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name, Tetlamachti (perhaps “He Teaches" or "He Preaches”), is attested here as a man’s name or occupation. The glyph shows an open book (perhaps a prayer book) above a stone (tetl). The latter serves as a phonetic indicator that this name starts with Te-.
Stephanie Wood
In modern Nahuatl, this clearly refers to teaching, but in the sixteenth century, teaching and preaching were less well delineated. In our Online Nahuatl Dictionary, we have the example of the Nahuatl-language testaments from Toluca, which use the term temachti to refer to an Indigenous person who was teaching the Christian doctrine.
Stephanie Wood
xpōval tetlamachti
Cristóbal Tetlamachti
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
te-, nonspecific human object prefix, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/te
te(tl), stone, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tetl
tlamachtia, to enrich someone, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlamachtia
tlamachtia, to preach, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlamachtia-0
tlamachtiā, to teach, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlamachti%C4%81-1
tetlamachtiani, one who enriches, glorifies, or gives spiritual guidance, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tetlamachtiani
temachti, a teacher, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/temachti
Enseña la Gente, o Predica
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 746v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=571&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).