Tlatoani (MH711r)
This colorful simplex glyph for the personal name, Tlatoani (“One Who Speaks”), shows five speech scrolls emerging outward from the tribute payer’s mouth (shown in profile). They turn up and down at the ends. Two volutes are yellow, two are left white or natural, and one is red.
Stephanie Wood
Contrary to what the name might suggest, this man is not a ruler. “Speaker” typically refers to a ruler, but here it must have been a name given to a talkative baby. The name “Chalan,” which appears several times in this digital collection, seems to have a similar meaning, “Talkative Person.” The meaning of the color scheme of the volutes is elusive.
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
volutas, hablar, nombres de hombres
tlatoani, speaker, one who speaks, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlatoani
posiblemente, Hablador
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 711r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=500&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).