Xochicuic (MH508v)

Xochicuic (MH508v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Xochicuic (perhaps "Flower-Singer" or "Flower Song") shows a flower and swirling lines emerging from the head of the man who bears the name. We have retained the head as part of the glyph because he is singing (cuica)--apparently a flower (xochitl) song. Or, the glyph is placed near his head to clarify that the swirls are song scrolls. The flower has a large rounded center and three visible petals.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

To have a personal name like Xochicuic may mean more than something occupational or some period of sounds emitted as a baby. Bierhorst's Ballads of the Lords of New Spain (2010, 38) gives examples of people equated with being a song: "I come created as a song, come fashioned as a song," "As a song you've been born, O Montezuma: as a flower you've come to bloom on earth," and "As songs you've come alive, as flowers you've blossomed, O princes." These song lyrics offer some cultural depth to the name here.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

po
xochicuic

Gloss Normalization: 

Pedro Xochicuic

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Huexotzinco, Matrícula de (MH)
Date of Manuscript: 

1560

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Huejotzingo, Puebla, Mexico

Semantic Categories: 
personal name
Writing Features: 
compound fully logographic
Cultural Content & Iconography: 
Flowers
Gender (male)
Music, Song, Dance
Names (personal and/or theonym)
Speech, Speaking, Oral Tradition
Colors: 
black & white drawing (no color)
Shapes and Perspectives: 
curving, curvy, curved
facing right
profile view
spiraling, swirling, coiling, curling
tripartite
Parts (compounds or simplex + notation): 
2
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
downward
right to left
Keywords: 

songs, scrolls, volutas, canciones, cantar, flores

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 

xochi(tl), flower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xochitl
cuica, to sing, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cuica

Image Source: 

Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 508v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=96&st=image

Image Source, Rights: 

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).

Historical Contextualizing Image: