Cristiano (MH720v)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for the personal name “Xpiano” or Cristiano (“Christian”) is attested here as a man’s last name. It shows the head of a Spanish man in profile, looking toward the viewer’s right. The man wears a hat with a wide band around his head, a puffy part at the top, and a large bill over his face. He also has a significant beard.
Stephanie Wood
Among Indigenous people of Mesoamerica, “Cristiano” was another way of saying Spaniard. It is somewhat curious that a Nahua man would have this name, but 99% of Nahuas by this time (1560) had Christian given names, and a considerable number of men in Huexotzinco had taken the first name Toribio, after the famous friar Toribio de Benavente Motolinia. Many elite Nahua men were taking Spanish surnames, too, such as Motolinia and de Gante (see below), the latter, honoring another famous friar.
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
religión cristiana, nombres de hombres
quixtiano, a Spaniard, a Christian (a Nahuatlized loanword from Spanish), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/quixtiano
Cristiano
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 720v, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=519&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).
