tepi

[Frances Karttunen]

I think the name Delia was inquiring about is A:cama:pi:chtli.

Ma:pi:ch-tli means 'fist.'  A:ca-tl is reed.  Rather than representing
water, the water glyph emerging from a fist would be a phonetic hint
that the name in question begins with the vowel/syllable a:.


On May 12, 2005, at 7:18 PM, campbel at INDIANA.EDU wrote:

>    "tepiltzin" (note the -tzin) falls apart in different way from
> "tepi" (which
> doesn't fall apart at all).  "tepi" is a morpheme, so it has no
> sub-parts, no
> constituents.  On the occe maitl, "tepiltzin":
>
>        te          pil(li)         tzin
>        someone's   child           endearing diminutive suffix
>
>    With regard to your "a(l(t))-mapitchtli", I doubt that "a:(tl)"
> combines with
> the rest of it in its rarer "al-" form, so it would probably show up
> as "a-".
> In the most common Nahuatl spelling the /ch/ phoneme is spelled "ch"
> (although
> the unitary sound of /ch/ *does* contain a kind of "t").  With the
> leading
> element "cem-", Molina gives both "cemmapichtli" and "cemmapictli":
>
>    cemmapichtli   haze o haz de cosas menudas; manojo, o hace de cosas
> menudas
>
>    cemmapictli    <lo mesmo es que cemmapichtli>; pun~o o pun~ado assi
> de cosas
>                   largas; como de pajas o yeruas
>
>       cem            ma:(itl)         pi:qui     [patientive noun
> derivation]
>       one, complete  hand             squeeze
>
>    (The "ch" form is a variant which is seen frequently in patientive
> nouns.)
>
> Joe
>
>
> Quoting Delia Cosentino <dacosentino at EARTHLINK.NET>:
>
>> Thanks, and just a follow up: is this related to tepilzin at all, i.e.
>> suggesting descent or an offspring, or does it have totally separate
>> linguistic origins?
>> Also, how might people read the name glyph of the stylized stream of
>> water
>> grasped by a hand? Something like...(apologies in
>> advance)...Al(t)mapitchtli?
>>
>>
>