Tlamauhco (MH486v)
This simplex glyph for the place name Tlamauhco ("Place of Wise Men" or "Place of Knowledgeable Men") shows a human eye (ixtli) with a red eyelid, a white pupil, and a white iris. There is one extra concentric half-circle compared to the usual ixtli glyphs, and this may be more of an effort to distinguish between an iris and a pupil. The locative suffix (-co) is not shown visually.
Stephanie Wood
This eye is also called the starry eye or stellar eye, given how it can double as a star in the sky. This connection with celestial phenomena may relate to the meaning of the place name. The name seems to derive from tlamati, supposedly to "practice trickery or sorcery." However, the translation of sorcery may reveal a Christian bias on the part of the friar Alonso de Molina, and really the Nahuas saw the Tlamauh- (or Tlamao) as being wise, perhaps like a priest. Supporting this, the use of the eye (ixtli) for the glyph calls forth the verb ixtlamati, to be wise, prudent. Furthermore, Marc Thouvenot (2010, 178–181) explains how iximati (which can become imati, to manage cleverly or create skillfully) compares to mati (to know). Imati involves knowing through seeing, much like conocer might indicate in Spanish, and mati is "to know" as in saber in Spanish. Once again, then, the eye glyph is a semantic indicator for a place of wisdom.
Stephanie Wood
tlamavco
Tlamauhco
Stephanie Wood
1560
Xitlali Torres
ojos, eyes, stars, estrellas, conocimiento, sabiduría, tlamao, tlamauh
tlamauh, wise one, knowledgeable person, or possibly sorcerer, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlamauh
tlamauh(tli), crazed, berzerk, or infected, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlamauhtli
ix(tli), eye, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ixtli
ixtlamati, to be wise, prudent, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ixtlamati
tlamati, to know something, to jest, or to practice "sorcery" (verb), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlamati
tlamatini, a sage, wise person, scholar, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlamatini
tlama, someone knowledgeable, also a medico, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlama-0
El Lugar de Sabios
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 486v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=52&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).