Otonmani (MH560r)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Otonmani (“Like an Otomí,” attested here as a man’s name) shows a profile view of the head of a person with face paint or tattoos of intersecting lines. Someone has ahold of his hair and is pulling it. The hand (maitl) of the hair-puller could have a phonetic role in the verb mani, which, when combined with an ethnicity is to be like that type of person.
Stephanie Wood
To pull or cut someone's hair in Nahua culture was a grave insult, a dishonor, and a cause of intense emotion. Sonya Lipsett-Rivera writes about the ritual humiliation of hair pulling in Religion in New Spain, eds. Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole (2007), 79.
Lipsett-Rivera also discusses how hair pulling was an attack strategy. (See her book: Gender and the Negotiation of Daily Life in Mexico, 1750-1856, 2012, 245.) Thus, it seems this Otomí man is being mistreated or was being captured (see also the tlamani and icali glyphs in this collection). Perhaps he was about to be sacrificed, as the hair of some slaves was pulled out before they were sacrificed.
Stephanie Wood
marcos . otonmani
Marcos Otonmani
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
ethnicities, etnicidades, Otomíes hair, cabello, face paint or tattooing, tatuaje o pintura, pull, pulling, jalar
otomi(tl), Otomí culture group, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/otomitl
ma(itl), hand, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/maitl
-mani, is located, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/mani
tlamani>, to capture others in war, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlamani
Ser a la Manera de un Otomí
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 560r, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=199&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).