Xochipepena (MH488v)

Xochipepena (MH488v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Xochipepena (“He Chooses Flowers,” or "He Harvests Flowers," attested here as a man’s name) shows a frontal view of a human hand (a semantic indicator for the verb pepena) reaching up to two flowers (xochitl), each featuring three petals, and arranged symmetrically. Between the two blossoms is the glyph for rain (quiyahuitl) or water (atl). The latter could provide the "a" that comes at the end of the name.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

Pehpena (here showing the glottal stop) was used in many cases to refer to a kind of labor, a harvesting. Frances Karttunen notes how the term is combined with many "harvestable" or "collectable" items, such as firewood, maize, and tomatoes (see our Online Nahuatl Dictionary). If flowers were a required item for harvesting, that says something interesting about the culture. The term pehpena also applies to elections (choosing a leader). See our dictionary for examples of the term's usage.

The presence in this glyph of two flowers may provide a hint to the reduplication of the verb pepena. The role of the rain glyph in the compound is unclear. Rain is a day sign in the 260-day divinatory calendar (the tonalpohualli), so perhaps the flowers are being selected for a religious feast day.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image:

Gloss Diplomatic Transcription:

marcos xochipepena

Gloss Normalization:

Marcos Xochipepena

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:

calendrics

day name

Syntax:

phrase or sentence

reduplication (in gloss/text)

reduplication (visual)

verb

visual plural (multiples of objects)

Writing Features:

compound fully logographic

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Flowers

Religion (Indigenous)

Time, Calendar, Frequency

Weather, Climate

Cultural Content, Credit:

Xitlali Torres

Colors:

black & white drawing (no color)

Shapes and Perspectives:

frontal view

symmetry

tripartite

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation):

Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation):

downward

Keywords:

flowers, flores, rain, lluvia, escoger, choose, pick

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

xochitl, flower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xochitl
pepena, to choose, select, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pepena
quiyahui(tl), rain, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/quiyahuitl

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

Escoge Flores, o Cosecha Flores

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 488v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=56&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: