Disputatio:Huitztzilopochtli

A chunk of J. Richard Andrews' Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, Revised Edition (2003) which might be a bit much to include in the article itself:

Huitztzilōpōchtli = #0‐0(0‐0‐Huitz‐tzil‐ōpōch‐tli‐0)0‐0# = he is called “It Is a Left Foot/Hand Like a Hummingbird (i.e., swift in aggression)” [“he is Left Foot/Hand Like a Hummingbird”; traditionally, the /ȼ/ is reduced in spelling from tztz to tz (i.e., Huitzilōpōchtli). More rarely, the pronunciational spelling ttz (i.e., Huittzilōpōchtli) is found. The name is constantly mistranslated, commonly as “Humming from/on the Left and “Southern Hummingbird,” mistranslations that reverse embed and matrix. The matrix of the inner stem is (ōpōch)-tli-, “left side/foot/hand,” and the embed is (huitz-tzil)-in-, “a thing that hums in the form of a thorn (because of the thornlike beak),” i.e., “hummingbird.” There are depictions that show the god with his left foot in the shape of a bird’s foot, and in FC III, 4, one finds the description Auh cē pitzāhuac in īcxi īōpōchcopa quipotōnih in īxocpal, “And one of his legs, the one on the left side, was thin, and he had pasted feathers on the sole of its foot.” Chimalpahin, at a greater colonial distance, says Ōquitōcāyōtihqueh Huitztzilōpōchtli īpampa ōpōchmāyeh catca, “They called him Huitzilopochtli because he was left‐handed,” which shows he did not understand.]

--Vlad 06:37 aug 27, 2005 (UTC)

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