Totoltzinco (Mdz21v)
This compound glyph for the place name Totoltzinco includes the head of a wild turkey (totolin) and the rear end (tzintli). The human body is a terracotta color. The human is positioned as though facing to the right. A white belt for what would be a loincloth conveys that this is a male figure. The turkey head, also positioned as though facing the right, is primarily colored a turquoise blue, but it has a gray beak, a white eye ball, red dots scattered around the head, red stripes on the back of its neck, and a large red wattle (loose skin near the neck). Around the perimeter of the head are six little balls, turquoise in color.
Stephanie Wood
The positioning of the turkey head and the tzintli makes it appear as though the human has a turkey head. One wonders if the humorous result is intentional. The tzintli is there to provide the phonetic value of the -tzinco locative suffix, which says "at the little" or "new [town]," and it has nothing to do with human anatomy.
Stephanie Wood
totolçingo.puo
Totoltzinco, pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
guajolotes, turkeys, nalgas
totol(in), wild turkey, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/totolin
-tzinco (locative suffix), lower, little, or new [town], https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tzinco
Codex Mendoza, folio 21 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 53 of 188.
Original manuscript is held by the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1; used here with the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0)