Tecalco (Mdz20v)
This compound glyph for the place name Tecalco has two main components, a diadem and a building. The diadem or crown is turquoise, shown in profile, facing to the viewer's right. It has a point at the front and a red tie (leather?) at the back. The diadem symbolizes a lord or high noble (tecuhtli). The house or building (calli) appears below the diadem. The building is also shown in profile. It is white, with terracotta-colored beams in the shape of a T around the entrance. The locative suffix (-co) is not shown visually here, but the building may be providing a semantic locative.
Stephanie Wood
Even though the spelling might suggest stone, this compound may refer to a place known for having an important noble's (or lord's) house or palace (such as a tecpan), and therefore the orthography might preferably be Teccalco. Other visual representations of the place name Tecalco do emphasize stone (see below).
Stephanie Wood
tecalco .puo
Tecalco, pueblo
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, or by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
houses, buildings, palaces, architecture, casas, edificios, arquitectura, señores, palacios
tecuh(tli), lord or high noble, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tecuhtli
cal(li), house or building, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/calli
-co (locative suffix), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/co
tecpan, a lord's palace, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tecpan
Codex Mendoza, folio 20 verso, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 51 of 188.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).
