Tenahuac (MH663r)

The placement of the mouth is intentional, and serves phonetically to represent proximity (-nahuac). The mouth or lips (tentli) also provide the phonetic start to the name, Te-, which could well be the nonspecific human object prefix and not Ten- at all. So, this compound is fully phonographic. The sense of this name is similar to Tehuan (see below). The implication is that the person with this name is "with someone" or "a partner to someone," according to Alonso de Molina's vocabulary. And having the one extra person's head would concur visually with the singular interpretation. But the Te- (generic, someone singular or plural) could mean that the person with this name would be accompanied by people, not alone. Our Online Nahuatl Dictionary provides a sixteeeth-century example of tenahuac with this plural sense: huel tetloc, tenahuac tinemiz = podrás vivir al lado de la gente, entre la gente = you will be able to live at the side of people, among people. (See the link in the dictionary field in this record.) It is a beautiful thought for naming a baby to predict that future of being among people all its life, not alone. Perhaps it was a gregarious baby.