Acolco (Osu11r)
This painting of the compound glyph for the place name, Acolco (“At the Bend in the River”) shows a rounded river. The water (atl) is painted turquoise blue; it is here to provide the phonetic start to the noun for shoulder. The river makes a bend (acolli, which really means shoulder), with spurts along the curve that culminate in white droplets and shells. The water also has a line of current (movement) running along inside the stream. The locative suffix (-co), meaning in or at, is not provided visually, although it may be assumed to the the location of the river.
Stephanie Wood
This is one of ten pueblos who were expected to provide one load of grass (worth 20 cacao beans) daily to feed the horses of the Oidor Dr. Puga, a Spanish colonial official. They were kept in a caballeriza that the Nahuas of Iztacalco built for him.
There is another place name in this collection that is Acocolco, similar to this one, in that it is a river with a big bend. “Acol” (the apocopated version of acolli) is a popular name for Nahua men in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco. These glyphs typically feature an arm. The shoulder is not really more noticeable than the elbow in some of the arms; others have a feature at the site of the shoulder, such as gushing water. The glyphs for the ethnicity of the Acolhua and the place name Acolhuacan will also typically employ an arm (for acolli) and a hand (for the possessive syllable, -hua-).
Stephanie Wood
1551–1565
Jeff Haskett-Wood
agua, ríos, curvas, hombros, nombres de lugares
a(tl), water, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/atl
acol(li), shoulder, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/acolli
-co (locative suffix), in or at, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/co
“En la Curva del Río”
Stephanie Wood
Library of Congress Online Catalog and the World Digital Library, Osuna Codex, or Painting of the Governor, Mayors, and Rulers of Mexico (Pintura del Gobernador, Alcaldes y Regidores de México), https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_07324/. The original is located in the Biblioteca Nacional de España.
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