Oyohual (MH769v)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Oyohual ("Bell," referring to a bell tied to the leg for dancing) is attested here as a man's name. It is a large, round, black object with a slit at the bottom for sound to emerge. It also has a small loop at the top for attaching the bell to a cord that would be tied around the leg.
Stephanie Wood
This bell is unusually round and black, which may suggest that the writer wished to emphasize the O- of the start to this personal name by adding a hint of olli (rubber, which often took the form of a black ball). So, that is a possible phonetic dimension. Even more likely seems to be the desire to convey night (yohualli), which is a near homophone to oyohualli (bell).
Stephanie Wood
gaspar ohyōvāl
Gaspar Oyohual
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
piernas, campanillas, cascabeles, bailar, guerreros, guerra, música, hule, nombres de hombres
oyohual(li), leg bell for dancing, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/oyohualli
Campanilla o Cascabel
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 769v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=613.
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).