huitzitzilin (FCbk11f24r)
This iconographic example, featuring a group of hummingbirds (huitzitzilin), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the Nahuatl text near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a group of four hummingbirds in flight, moving toward the viewer’s right. They are yellow, green, and blue/gray. A fifth, yellow huitzilin, also in flight, pauses to suckle a red flower. Behind these birds are two more, one yellow one sitting in a nest in a tree and one gray one hanging from a tree branch. Above the latter, a dark cloud sheds short streams of rain with droplets at the bottom of each one.
Stephanie Wood
Huitzitzilin (hummingbirds) are common in Nahuatl hieroglyphs, often as parts of compound place names, such as Huitzilapan or Huitzillan, personal names, such as Huitzilihuitl, or names of divine forces, such as Huitzilopochtli. The element recurring in all of these is the singular form, huitzilin. On the back side of the folio where this image of multiple hummingbirds appears, there is a ecahuitzilin (singular), and the text describes the group (ecahuitzitzilin), along with a wide range of other hummingbirds, including names that start with quetzal-, xiuh-, chachiuh-, tlapal-, and more.
Stephanie Wood
Vitzitzili : vitzili
huitzitzilin, huitzilin (plural and singular)
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
huitzitzil(in), hummingbirds, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/huitzitzilin
los colibríes
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 24r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/24r/images/0 Accessed 16 October 2025.
Images of the digitized Florentine Codex are made available under the following Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International). For print-publication quality photos, please contact the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana ([email protected]). The Library of Congress has also published this manuscript, using the images of the World Digital Library copy. “The Library of Congress is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection. Absent any such restrictions, these materials are free to use and reuse.”
