Millacuilol (MH641r)
This black and white compound glyph for the personal name Millacuilol ("Milpa Design," attested here as a man's name) shows a bird's eye view of a square cornfield (milli) that is divided diagonally in half, the top half being light and the bottom half being dark. Perhaps this suggests the cultivation of two different crops, or furrows, or parcelling. On top of the diagonal is a quincunx shaped flower, with four petals and a small central circle.
Stephanie Wood
The term tlacuilolli usually refers to writing, but it is also seen in association with stone carving and cultivation (the latter, typically combining with the stem for cuemitl, furrow, and sometimes combining with icuilolli (a piece of writing or a painting) or icuiloa (to write or paint). Besides this milli + tlacuilolli, we have one tlalicuilol.
Marc Thouvenot identifies the verb icuiloa (or ihcuiloa, with the glottal stop), which means to paint, write, or print, as having a root of -cuil-. He notes how it also appears in tlacuiloliztli (writing), tlacuilo (writer), and cuicuiltic (mottled). He goes on to show various uses of icuiloa that take it beyond the simple definitions just given, resulting in something like the action of creating a design (e.g., on leather, ceramics, sculpture, or in textiles). It can also be something like the action of decorating (e.g., to put a flower on a cup of atole). He associates icuiloa and tlacuilolli with "cultural artifacts," such as arts and crafts or examples of writing and painting, but cuicuiltic with effects created by "nature." This short summary barely does his article justice; it is worth reading the entire piece. How Thouvenot's study might connect with the concept of bent or curved mentioned by Prem (1974: 555, 682) raises an interesting question. Perhaps the bent or curved lines of writing, painting, carving, embroidery, and so on, fall with in the realm of expressions of -cuil-. See
Marc Thouvenot, "Imágenes y escritura entre los nahuas del inicio del XVI," Estudios de Cultural Náhuatl 41 (2010).
Stephanie Wood
milacuilol
Millacuilol
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
land, parcelas, sementeras, tierras, diseños, milpas, agricultura, flores, nombres de hombres

mil(li), agricultural field, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/milli
tlacuilol(li), something written, painted, carved, or cultivated, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlacuilolli
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 641r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=364&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).
