Etimologia de Texcoco

[Roger Byrne]

>The glyph on the webpage at the url sent out by Carlos comes from
>the Mendoza Codex.
>Orozco y Berra's explanation doesn't really solve the problem though
>either for the
>glyph or the word. He differentiates, as we have done in this
>discussion, between the
>actual meaning of the word and the pictographic morphology of the
>glyph. So, if I'm
>understanding him correctly, he says that the word actually means
>"place of stopping,
>detaining, or remaining" (I know, not a very elegant translation).
>I'm a little wary
>about accepting this interpretation just because Ixtlilxochitl says so with no
>morphological or etymological corroboration. Ixtlilxochitl's
>interpretation could
>very easily be a folk etymology.
>Then Orozco y Berra goes on to say that the glyph is essentially a
>rebus (although he
>doesn't use this term) not related to the actual meaning of the
>toponym and that it
>refers to "jarilla de risco" which in English I think would be "rock
>rose". And this
>rebus is arrived at by identifying the flower in the glyph as "tlacotl," which
>according to him means "jarilla" (rock rose)--although this word often means
>"stick"--, and "texcalli" which corresponds to the rocky hill. This
>interpretation of
>the phonetics of the glyph is more problematic than the others I
>mentioned before. I
>give him the benefit of the doubt that term "tlacotl" can mean
>rock-rose. But even if
>that is true, it seems unlikely to me that a tlacuilo would resort
>to "tlacotl" to
>produce the syllable "co" when it would be much easier to use a more
>transparent
>image, especially since a pot (comitl) is so commonly used to represent this
>syllable. And in any case, pictographic glyphs images like this tend
>to be stylized.
>That is to say that a flower is a flower, not any particular species
>of flower, just
>a flower. So, having a flower growing out of a rocky hill might
>invoke the idea of
>"rock rose" and hence its phonetic articulation, but then to get
>"texcalli", the
>rocky mountain would have to serve the double function of specifying
>the type of
>flower and signifying its own phonetic articulation. I would be
>interested to know if
>there any other examples of glyphs serving double functions like this.
>This leads back to one of the interpretations to which I referrred
>originally: that
>there is a word texcotli or tezcotli or something similar that
>refers to some kind of
>plant (maybe it is jarilla). The more I look at it, the more I think
>maybe this maybe
>the best hypothesis, given the limited evidence available. If this
>were the case,
>then we wouldn't need "texcalli" or "xochitl" to explain the glyph.
>In this case, the
>glyph wouldn't be a rebus at all. The flower growing out of the
>rocky hill would
>signify "rock rose", the rocky hill would be there not as a phonetic
>element but
>merely to identify what kind of flower it was. Finding a word like
>texcotli used to
>refer to a plant would really help out a lot. Aside from modern Nahuatl
>speakers--which should never be discounted--there are three places
>that I can think
>of to look. 1) the Florentine Codex, which doesn't seem to contain
>any such word; 2)
>the Badianus Manuscript, which is an indigenous herbal; I've seen a
>facsimile of this
>document in the past, but my library doesn't have a copy; the writer
>uses Latin, but
>the names of the plants are all in Nahuatl; and 3) that 16th-century
>text by the
>proto-medico Hernandez who compiled volumes of encyclopedic
>information on plants
>from Mexico and their medicinal uses. I was under the impression
>that the original
>multi-volume work was destroyed when the Escorial burned, but
>somebody recently told
>me that part of it or a copy of it or something had survived and was
>in some archive
>in Madrid. I don't know if this is true and if so if it has been published.
>
>Galen
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>"John F. Schwaller" wrote:
>
>>  From: Carlos Santamarina <Carlossn at diploma.com>
>>  To: nahuat-l at mrs.umn.edu
>>  Subject: ?Etimologia_de_Texcoco?
>>
>>  En la página siguiente se ofrece otra etimología (y una versión del
>  > glifo toponímico)...
>>
>>
>>http://geography.berkeley.edu:16080/ProjectsResources/Glyphs/Plate29/Texcoco.html
>>
>>  In 1885 Don Antonio Peñafiel published his "Nombres Geográficos de
>>  México," an annotated listing of all the place name glyphs included in
>>  the Matricula de Tributos and the Codex Mendocino...
>>
>>  <<Texcoco. -- Texco-co. -- Tezcuco.
>>
>>  Diptongo jeroglífico, cuya interpretacion pertenece al Sr. Orozco y Berra.
>>
>>  "Una montaña riscosa, sobre la cual florece la jarilla, y junto un brazo
>>  extendido con el símbolo atl." La ciudad de Tezcuco, dice Ixtlilxochitl,
>>  fué fundada en tiempo de los toltecas con el nombre de Catenichco;
>>  destruida al tiempo que aquella nacion, la embelleció mucho, puso en
>>  ella su residencia y la hizo la capital del imperio. A su llegada los
>>  chichimecas la llamaron Tezcuco, es decir, lugar de detencion, porque
>>  allí pararon todas las naciones que entónces habia en la Nueva España."
>>  No dudamos que sea esta la verdadera interpretacion, y entónces será un
>>  carácter ideográfico con el valor fónico, Tezcoco; la escritura no
>>  obstante, suministra gráficamente otra etimología: Tlacotl, jarilla,
>>  vardasca, se retiere á la que brota en los terrenos llanos; Texcotli, es
>>  la jarilla de los riscos, tomando la radical de texcalli, peñasco ó
>>  risco; de aquí la verdadera ortografía del nombre de Texco-co, la
>>  jarilla de los riscos.">>
>>
>>  Carlos Santamarina <Carlossn at diploma.com>

Now that the Texcoco discussion has turned botanical, I thought I
should point out that the flower depicted in the Mendoza glyph for
"Tezcuco" (folio 3V) looks very much like Dahlia coccinea, perhaps
the most beautiful of all Mesoamerican ornamentals.  The artist
confused me at first because he shows the ray flowers as yellow and
the disk flowers as red.  However, a quick check of Dahlia  coccinea
images via Google did produce a hybrid which has ray flowers that are
red and yellow, with the central part of the petal red and the outer
part yellow.

Dahlia coccinea has a wide distribution in Central Mexico and
although Oscar Sanchez  doesn't report it specifically for the
Texcoco area in his "La Flora del Valle de Mexico",  he does note
that it grows there  between 1,000 and 3000 meters.

Possibly also relevant here is that Alexis Wimmer's Classical Nahuatl
Dictionary site lists the Nahuatl name for Dahlia coccinea as
"acocohxôchitl".  I will leave the linguistic analysis to the
linguists.

Orozco y Berra's "Texcotli, es la jarilla de los riscos"  may be a
reference to another member of the Asteraceae.  Sanchez lists
"jarilla" as the common name for 5 different species of Asteraceae in
his Flora. Dahlia coccinea is not one of them.

Roger Byrne

--
Dr. Roger Byrne
Associate Professor
Geography Department
501 Mc Cone Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

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