Article suitable for Top Juniors and above

Ideas for AZTEC NAMES...

19th Sep 2022

Painting of a Mexica baby held by her mother

We’re sincerely grateful to Professor John F. Schwaller, an American historian of Latin America, specialising in colonial Mexico, religion, and indigenous peoples - and a longstanding member of our Panel of Experts - for allowing us to upload this important resource. Some years ago Bob McCaa of the University of Minnesota completed an analysis of Nahuatl names found in an early, ca. 1540, census (S. L. Cline, The Book of Tributes: Early Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Censuses from Morelos [Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1993]. Here are the Top Ten Nahuatl names:-

Male: (sample is 1300, frequency shown beside name, given in Nahuatl and English) -
• Yaotl (War) (74)
• Matlalihuitl (Blue-green Feather, or Purple Feather) (66)
• Nochehuatl (Consistent) (59)
• Coatl (Snake) (48)
• Tototl (Bird) (19)
• Quauhtli (Eagle) (18)
• Tochtli (Rabbit) (17)
• Zolin (Quail) (16)
• Matlal (Dark Green, or Net) (12)
• Xochitl (Flower) (12).

Female: (sample is 1205) -
• Teyacapan (First-born) (313)
• Tlaco (Middle-born) (182)
• Teicuih (Younger sister) (182)
• Necahual (Survivor, Left-behind) (151)
• Xoco (Youngest sister) (53)
• Centehua (Only one) (42)
• Xocoyotl (Youngest child) (38)
• Tlacoehua (Middle one) (22)
• Tepin (Little one) (15)
• Cihuaton (Little woman) (15).

Please note the extremely limited number of female names. While among the males there were 427 unique names, among the females there were only 57. As you can also see, nearly all the female names refer to birth order.

Another list in Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memorialies (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1999). In Chapter 4, paragraph 3, pp. 253-55 Sahagún lists names for boys and girls. Here are the first ten from each list with translations by Thelma Sullivan:-
Boys:-
• Yaotl (War)
• Tochtli (Rabbit)
• Mazatl (Deer)
• Coatl (Snake)
• Xochitl (Flower)
• Cuetzpalli (Lizard)
• Cipactli (Crocodile)
• Ollin (Movement)
• Xochipepe (Flower-gatherer)
• Cuixtli (Kite [a type of hawk]).

Girls:-
• Teyacapan (First born)
• Teuicui (Younger sister)
• Xoco (Youngest sister)
• Papan (Flag)
• Tlacotl (Osier twig [sic. it probably is Tlaco = middle born])
• Xiloxoch (Calliandra [a flowering plant])
• Miyaoaxochitl (Maize tassel flower)
• Eloxochitl (Magnolia)
• Mizquixaual (Mesquite face paint)
• Xochitl (Flower).

Data: ©1999 John F. Schwaller.

Image sources:-
• Main pic: detail from a mural by Regina Raúll, ‘Paisaje Mexica’ (1964), National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City (photo: Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
• Pic 1: image scanned from our own copy of the Club Internacional del Libro facsimile edition of the Florentine Codex, Madrid, 1994
• Pic 2: image from the Codex Mendoza (original in the Bodleian Library, Oxford) scanned from our own copy of the James Cooper Clark 1938 facsimile edition, London
• Pic 3: image scanned from our own copy of the Codex Laud, ADEVA facsimile edition, Graz, Austria, 1966
• Pic 4: image scanned from our own copy of the ADEVA facsimile edition of the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, Graz, Austria, 1987.