Cuauhtetelco (Mdz48r)

Frances Karttunen suggests that the stem tetel- refers to a "mound, craggy land, sierra (cf. Tetela, Tetelcingo; vowel length and presence/absence of saltillo unknown)." It make sense if the place name refers to landscape feathers such as wooded, craggy land.

Berdan and Anawalt interpret this place as "Tree on the Mound," taking tetelli to mean mound. They also relate how Peñafiel (1885, 95) suggests "On the Wooden Temple," having cuahuitl refer to wood and tetelli to pyramid.

Tetelli is one of a few Nahuatl words for what Europeans would call pyramids, and this glyph may give insight into Nahua thinking about such structures. Another term that has been translated as pyramid is tzacualli, which is a word that has been used to describe the pyramids of the "sun" and "moon" at Teotihuacan, such as we see in the Primeros Memoriales ("ytzacual tonatiuh" and "ytztacual metztli") and in a slightly different version of the Florentine Codex, Book 7, Chapter 2 (in the corresponding place of the Memoriales), "tetepe tzacualli, ytzacual tonatiuh yoan ytztacual metztli." This latter use suggests that pyramids were seen as a type of tepetl, which is also echoed in later colonial Nahua manuscripts. The so-called Techialoyan manuscripts from ca. 1700, is where one will find "tlachihualtepetl," or a tepetl that is a "made thing" (tlachihualli), as in human-made. For other pyramid-like constructions in the Codex Mendoza, see glyphs that involve -teopan- and -teocal-, such as Capolteopan, Cihuateopan;
Teocalhueiacan, and
Teocaltzinco.

Of course, here, the pyramid may have been drawn to elicit the phonetic tetel- meaning mound. Thus, it may not be a literal reading. The reading of "mound" may be behind Karttunen's translation, "wooded upland."