Xochtlan (Mdz13r)
This simplex glyph for the place name Xochtlan shows a person's head (presumably a man), in profile, looking to the viewer's left. He has a somewhat wide, red (leather?) headband with flower at the front. The flower has a green stem, white petals, and small yellow balls protruding from the petals. His hair is long on his neck, reaching below his ear, and short ad spiky on the top of his head. His nose has an unusual shape, perhaps having a hole for a nose plug that he is not currently wearing. His skin is a terracotta color. His hair is a light purple/gray. The locative suffix (-tlan) is not shown visually.
Stephanie Wood
The flower is most alike the flower on folio 27 recto (see below, right) from the Codex Mendoza. The man's appearance likely indicates a certain ethnicity, perhaps associated with the place, and probably recognized by viewers familiar with that region (now part of the state of Oaxaca). Otherwise, a place with lots of flowers could be many places.
Stephanie Wood
xochtlan. pueo
Xochtlan, pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
faces, caras, flowers, flores,
-tlan (locative suffix), place, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlan
Codex Mendoza, folio 13 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 36 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).
