Coatonal (MH640v)

Coatonal (MH640v)
Compound Glyph

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Coatonal ("Serpent-Tonal" or "Serpent Sun," here attested as a man's name) shows a coiled serpent with a rattler tail. The snake, in profile, looks toward the viewer's right. Its eye is open, its bifurcated tongue protrudes, and a fang also protrudes. Coming off the top and the bottom of the body of the serpent are rays, something like the Western representation of sun rays. Tonalli can mean sun, day, or it is an animating force associated with vibrance and movement.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

The tonalli that is a solar animating force can take animal shapes, and here that may be the sense of the name--that a serpent is the shape the person would take.

A colonial land dispute involved a doña María Coatonal, who is mentioned in Five Centuries of Law and Politics in Central Mexico, eds. Ronald Spores and Ross Hassig (1984), 30. So this is a name that could be held by a man or a woman.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Gloss Image: 
Gloss Diplomatic Transcription: 

couatonal

Gloss Normalization: 

Coatonal

Gloss Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Date of Manuscript: 

1560

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Huejotzingo, Puebla

Semantic Categories: 
Syntax: 
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Parts (compounds or simplex + notation): 
Reading Order (Compounds or Simplex + Notation): 
Keywords: 

culebras, víboras, serpientes, suns, days, soles, días, movimiento, snakes, nombres de hombres

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 

coa(tl), serpent or snake, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/coatl
tonal(li), day, sun, or personal animating force, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tonalli

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation: 

Serpiente Tonal

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 640v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=363&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: