Xochipepena (MH488v)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Xochipepena (“Chooses Flowers,” attested here as a man’s name) shows a frontal view of a human hand (a semantic indicator for the verb pepena) reaching up to two flowers (xochitl), each featuring three petals, and arranged symmetrically. Between the two blossoms is the glyph for rain (quiyahuitl), which does not seem to enter into the name as glossed.
Stephanie Wood
The presence of two flowers may provide a hint to the reduplication of the verb pepena. The role of the rain glyph in the compound is unclear. Rain is a day sign in the 260-day divinatory calendar (the tonalpohualli), so perhaps the flowers are being selected for a religious feast day.
Stephanie Wood
marcos xochipepena
Marcos Xochipepena
Stephanie Wood
1560
Xitlali Torres
flowers, flores, rain, lluvia, escoger, choose, pick
xochitl, flower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xochitl
pepena, to choose, select, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pepena
quiyahui(tl), rain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/quiyahuitl
Él Selecciona las Flores
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 488v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=56&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).