Cocol (MH608v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Cocol (perhaps "Quarrel" or "To Be Entrusted to Another Person") shows the hand of a person off screen grabbing and pulling the hair on the head of a man whose head is only showing. This head is shown in profile, facing toward the viewer's right. This glyph is very similar to the glyph for the name Cocoliloc ("Hated," below); perhaps Cocol is an abbreviated version of the name. This is attested here as a man's name.
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.
Juā cocol
Juan Cocol
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
hair pulling, tirar pelo, enojarse, pull, jalar, nombres de hombres
cocol(li), quarrel, anger, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cocolli
cocolia, to detest or hate someone, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cocolia
-lo-, passive tense, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/lo
cocoliloni, something abhorrent, loathsome, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/cocoliloni
Algo Abominable
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 608v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=299&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).
