tepi

[Galen Brokaw]

I know I'm coming to this discussion kind of late (I've been kind of
busy), but I just have one comment. First, it is hard to make any kind
of definitive statement because we don't have access to the larger
context of the document you are working on or even direct access to the
part you describe.
As you may already know, colonial documents with parallel alphabetic and
pictographic texts do not always include everything from one register in
the other. So, it is entirely possible that the text you are working on
does not include an alphabetic parallel for the glyph in question. So,
you don't necessarily have to associate the glyph with an alphabetic
name. On the other hand, if Tepi is the surname of the woman and this
glyph is associated with her, then this is very strange, because they
don't seem to be related. As Fran indicates, the name "Acamapichtli" is
well attested, while the name you hypothesize "Amapichtli" is not. It
would seem kind of odd, however, to represent the name "Acamapichtli" as
a hand grasping water, with the "atl" being a rebus for "acatl" when it
would be just as easy to use the well-established and more transparent
convention of a hand grasping a reed. I've seen the "Acamapichtli"
hand-grasping-a-reed glyph before, but not the hand-grasping-water (keep
in mind though that I haven't done any systematic survey of such
glyphs). Are you sure it is water in the glyph? If you are correct that
it is a hand grasping water, then working from the glyph itself without
any clearly parallel alphabetic text is kind of puzzling: the glyph
seems to suggest "Amapichtli" while the more common name is
"Acamapichtli"; and neither seem to have anything to do with "Tepi." In
any case, the name "Amapichtli" would also seem kind of strange in the
sense that you can't really grasp water because it isn't solid. But
there might be some interesting philosophical implications there. Have
you come across the name "Amapichtli" anywhere? If so, I would think
that this is the name indicated by the glyph. If not, I think Fran is
right that you have to consider the possibility that maybe they were
using water as a rebus for "acatl" and that the name is actually
"Acamapichtli." Of course, this still doesn't solve the mystery of how
it might be related to "Tepi." Maybe there are clues in other parts of
the document.
Galen




Frances Karttunen wrote:
> 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?
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>