Xochitototl (BMap H40)
This compound sign is a person's name, "Flower Bird" (male), according to Gordon Whittaker. The flower (xochitl), on the bottom, has three round blossoms, a stem, two leaves close to the stem, and one larger leaf standing a bit apart. Remnants of color still appear, especially the blue-green of the stem and leaves. The top element, the bird (tototl), faces to our left, with its beak held high, facing the head of the man who had this name. The bird also still has remnants of the blue-green color on much of its body, minus its chest and beak.
Stephanie Wood
Our Online Nahuatl Dictionary provides examples of the names Xochitl and Tototl in alphabetic manuscripts from the post-contact period, too. This example is male, as shown in the contextualizing image.
Stephanie Wood
Stephanie Wood
c. 1565
Stephanie Wood
Beinecke, birds, flowers, pájaros, flores, plantas
xochi(tl), flower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xochitl
toto(tl), bird, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tototl
XOCHI-TOTO(TL)
Beinecke Map/Codex Reese, section 8, no. 40 in the Whittaker study (published in the Miller/Mundy book, 2012), and see the original at: https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3600017
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).
