Cuenel (MH529r)

This skirt has the look of a garment a European man might wear in the sixteenth century, sometimes called trunk hose. The bulbous shape does not resemble the skirts we see on Indigenous women in a large array of glyphs for cihuatl and the like (see below). ] Juan José Batalla Rosado suggests the readings of cue- (from cueitl) and -nel (short for nelpiloni, sash), resulting in the meaning of a skirt sash or belt. He says that this Nahua name appears two other times in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco (MH), but it is rare. One of the other glyphs is the head of a man, which, he suggests, is probably a homophone not yet identified. He also reminds us that the tlacuilos of the MH had no problem cutting words short, such as we see with the example of nelpiloni. (Personal communication, January 4, 2023.)

If the gloss transcription and normalization should be quenel (how?), then this name is a simplex interrogative. There is another glyph that is quenel in this same manuscript, on folio 597 verso, but the visuals do not help. They involve a man's head in profile and a stick behind the head, at an angle. This is published by TLACHIA.