Colotl (MH527r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Colotl (here, attested as a man’s name) shows a bird's eye view of a scorpion (colotl) without a head. It does have six legs with claws, horizontal stripes across its body, and a notably curling tail (see the noun colli). The stinger at the end of the tail is not visible.
Stephanie Wood
The curling tail ay be a phonetic complement to the name of the bug, given that the verb coloa means "to curl," and if the verb is apocopated, it results in the root for colotl.
Stephanie Wood
augustin conlotl
Agustín Colotl
Stephanie Wood
1560
scorpion, escorpión, cola enrollada, curled tail
colo(tl), scorpion, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/colotl
coltic, curved, bent, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/coltic
coloa, to curl, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/coloa
col(li), something bent, twisted, or curling, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/colli-1
el escorpión
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 527r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=133&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).