Tlachyahualco (Mdz21v)
This compound glyph for the place name Tlachyahualco consists of a ball court (tlachtli)] inside a circle (yahualli). The ball court is seen from above, in a bird's eye view. It has the shape of a capital I, lying on its side. There are two rings in the middle of the court, on either side, meant for the balls to pass through. The court has a purple color, the same color used in the Codex Mendoza for tlalli (land, dirt, earth). The perimeter of the ball court is white, but the reason is not clear.
Stephanie Wood
The -yahualco ending on a place name may provide a locative suffix meaning "encircling." In this case, the result may be "Encircling the Ball Court" or "Around the Ball Court." See also Calyahualco (below, right), which might mean "Encircling the House/Building." If not, then the -co locative suffix is not visual.
tlachyahualco puo
Tlachyahualco, pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
circles, ball courts, ballcourts, around, surrounding, cículos, canchas, pistas redondo
tlach(tli), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlachtli
yahual(li), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/yahualli
-yahualco (locative suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/yahualco
-co (locative suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/co
Codex Mendoza, folio 21 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 53 of 188.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).