Cocol (MH602r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Cocol (“Quarrel” or perhaps "Entrusted to Another Person," attested here as a man’s name) shows a profile view of a human hand grasping the hair of man, which could be part of a quarrel or dispute.
Stephanie Wood
This sign may serve as a rebus-phonogram for the term cocolli, which refers to a quarrel, dispute, or anger and may be what this name really intends. Cocol without the absolutive is identified in our Online Nahuatl Dictionary as meaning "entrusted to another." Yet another possibility is that it is a rebus for grandparents or ancestors (colli). But an image of men with their hair being pulled more likely suggests a quarrel.
To pull or cut someone's hair in Nahua culture was a grave insult and 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.
Stephanie Wood
antoni cocol
Antonio Cocol
Stephanie Wood
1560
anger, riña, enojo
cocol(li), dispute, quarrel, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cocolli
cocolia, to detest someone, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cocolia
cocol, to be entrusted to another person, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cocol
Riña, o Enojo
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 602r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=283&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).
