Huitzitl (MH811r)
This black-line drawing of the compound glyph for the personal name Huitzitl (“Hummingbird”) is attested here as a man’s name. The glyph shows the head of a hummingbird in profile, facing the viewer’s right. Its long beak is pointing slightly upward. Below the bird’s head is a black and white rectangular object that may be itztli (an obsidian blade). If so, it is a phonetic complement and near homophone to the latter part of the name (-itzitl).
Stephanie Wood
Some examples of itztli, below, show how it can be black and white, something like this one.
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
birds, pájaros, colibrí, colibríes, nombres de hombres
huitzi(tl), hummingbird, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huitzitl
huitzil(in), hummingbird, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huitzilin
itz(tli), obsidian blade, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/itztli
Colibrí
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 811r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=696&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).