Nanotl (MH765r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name Nanotl (perhaps "Mother-like") is attested here as a woman's name. She is the wife of Tlanauh, a ruler who wears a cape and sits in a building. Her name is represented visually as an object that may be a back strap (neanoni) for her loom or a tumpline (mecapalli) for carrying things using a strap across the forehead. It is made from woven reeds (petlatl). For a woman, the weaving connection is the most likely. Neanoni may be a near homophone for nanotl, and therefore it is used as a phonetic indicator. Otherwise, it is a symbol of the work that most Nahua mothers did, which typically included weaving.
Stephanie Wood
Sahagún explains Nanotl as being like nanyotl, mother-ness, or being similar to tenan, which he translates as "mother of someone" or "mother in general." See Bernardino de Sahagún, Los cantares a los dioses (1938), 68. It makes sense that this is a name given to a woman.
See some examples of the use of a tumpline, below.
Stephanie Wood
ynes nanotl
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
nombres de mujeres, mecapales, mecapal, mecapalli, ixcuamama, tejido, esposa de noble or gobernante
Nanotzin, a woman's name and perhaps a tumpline, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/nanotzin
neanoni, a backstrap for a woman's loom, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/neanoni
Nanotzin (nombre de una mujer importante)
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 765r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=608&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).
