Tezahuatl (MH775v)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Tezahuatl ("Mite") is attested here as a man's name. The sign is not a drawing of a mite, which is a small, eight-legged arachnid. Rather the sign provides two phonetic indicators, one for Te- (from tentli, lip or edge, in profile, facing toward the viewer's right) and the other, a coiling swirl of water (atl), with three offshoots, providing the -a or -ahua in the middle of the name. The three short streams of water each have a bead-like droplet at the end and a black line down the middle to show current or movement.
Stephanie Wood
balthesal . teçahuatl
Baltazar Tezahuatl
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
agua, labios ácaros, animales, arácnidos, nombres de hombres
![](https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Tezahuatlcmpndpersonalname_0.png?itok=V6nDRUlr)
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
tezahua(tl), a mite, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tezahuatl
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 775v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=625&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).
![](https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/sites/default/files/TezahuatlContext.png)