Teuhcatl (MH876r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Teuhcatl (after a divine force relating to swirling dust) shows a partial head in profile, facing toward the viewer’s right. This head has curling bits at the top, somewhat reminiscent of the ends of stone signs (and if this is meant to be, it could be a phonetic indicator for the start of the name, Te-). At the place of the mouth, there is a wind-blowing device reminiscent of that pertaining to Ecatl or Ehecatl, the divine force of the wind. This makes some semantic sense, since dust devils are a type of whirlwind, and whirlwinds and whirlpools seem to have held a special place in Nahua culture.
Stephanie Wood
In Sarah Cline's Book of Tributes (1993) from Morelos, this is a name taken by Nahua men. A blog post study of the 1544 Nahuatl census of Morelos by Magnus Pharao Hansen suggests a translation of "Dust Person" for the name Teuhcatl. The visual certainly would support this interpretation. And the -catl suggests "person" with a certain association or affiliation.
However, there is more to the name. The Handbook of Middle American Indians: Anthology of Northern Mesoamerica (1971, 426) states that this was one of several Chinampaneca deities. According to the Gran Diccionario Náhuatl, Teuhcatl is a divinity akin to Mixcoatl. The Codex Chimalpopoca refers to the ixiptlatl of a divine force, Teuhcatl, who was dressed like Mixcoatl, and the Mexica were fooled by it. This is quoted in Molly Bassett's, The Fate of Earthly Things (2015), 162. Given the link with the divinity Mixcoatl, and the image of swirling serpent-like clouds typical of the glyphs of that name, this name Teuhcatl seemingly has associations with beliefs relating to the importance of wind and swirling rain clouds.
Stephanie Wood
matheo teuhcatl
Mateo Teuhcatl
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
polvo, viento, fuerzas divinas, religión indígena, nombres de deidades, nombres de hombres
Teuhcatl, both the name of a divine force and a personal name, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/teuhcatl
teuh(tli), dust, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/teuhtli
-ca(tl) (affiliation suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/catl
(nombre de una fuerza divina chinampaneca)
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 876r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=824&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).
