Oceloxochi (MH844r)
This black-line drawing of the simplex glyph for a widow (icnocihuatl). As one can see in the contextualizing image, this woman’s name (Oceloxochi, “Jaguar Flower”) has not been given a hieroglyph, unfortunately. The fact that she is a widow is supported with the tears on her visible cheek, and her hairstyle (the neaxtlahualli) indicates that she is female.
Stephanie Wood
Quite a few women in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco are not given name glyphs, many just have a first name, too, or else a birth-order name, which this page of the Matrícula de Huexotzinco illustrates. This phenomenon of naming patterns for men vs. women has been a subject of study by such scholars as Rebecca Horn (see: “Gender and Social Identity,” in Indian Women of Early Mexico, eds. Schroeder, Wood, and Haskett, 1999, 105). From the MH, we see that many men have the calendrical name Ocelotl, but not women, and there was a name for Jaguar Warrior (as in Moceloquich) given to some males. In this case, there is indeed a flower called oceloxochitl, known for its singular beauty, according to Clavijero (1780). “Xoch” is a part of many women’s names, much more so than for men, although men also had flower names.
Stephanie Wood
maria oceloxochi
María Oceloxochi
Stephanie Wood
1560
Jeff Haskett-Wood
viudas, jaguares, flores, nombres de mujeres
oceloxoch(itl), Aztec lily or a tiger flower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/oceloxochitl
xoch(itl), flower, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/xochitl
ocelo(tl), jaguar, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/ocelotl
Jaguar-Flor
Stephanie Wood
Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio 844r, World Digital Library, https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_15282/?sp=762&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).