yaotl (Mdz51r)
This element for war, enemy, or combatant (yaotl) has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Yaonahuac. The components of this element (which is something of a compound) are the war shield and the macuahuitl (obsidian-blade imbedded, wooden war club, called the macana, in Spanish).
Stephanie Wood
Yaotl is an extremely common name used by Nahua men in the sixteenth century. The name glyph usually just constituted a shield--sometimes with a cross or an X, with a growing influence, apparently, from European stylistics. Sometimes the shield has a turtle (ayotl) shell design, calling into use the near homophone. Even the tail and paws of the turtle can appear below and above the shield. See examples below.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
palo, aporreador, macana, maccuahuitl, macquahuitl, escudos, rodelas
yao(tl), war, enemy, combatant, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/yaotl
combatant
la guerra, el combatiente
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 51 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 112 of 118.
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).
