a snake; also called citlalin imiuh; very rare; terrifying and very poisonous, deadly; the stars on this snake, as seen in the second painting of it on folio 85v, has Europea-type pointed stars painted on it (SW)
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 85r, Sahagún, Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Transcribed and translated with notes by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. 2nd rev. ed. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research / University of Utah Press, 1950–82. Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/85r?spTexts=&nhTexts= Accessed 31 October 2025.
the vapor of a comet (see Molina); or, a shooting star (see Sahagún)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 7 -- The Sun, Moon, and Stars, and the Binding of the Years, Number 14, Part 8, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1953), 13.
star(s); when combined with popoca, a comet; when combined with huei, the planet Venus James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 215.
the appearance of the morning star also relates to the time of day, with dawn
Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. and transl. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 144–5.
"Star-Her Skirt," a deity that is part of the Ometeotl Complex, primordial parents of deities and humans, creation "Table 3. Major Deities of the Late Pre-Hispanic Central Mexican Nahua-Speaking Communities." Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 6: Social Anthropology, ed Manning Nash (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967).
a Nonoalca Chichimeca who settled in Tula with three other Nonoalcas and four Tolteca Chichimecas, according to the Historia Tolteca Chichimeca or Anales de Cuauhtinchan. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Literaturas de Anahuac y del Incario / Literatures of Anahuac and the Inca, ed. Miguel León-Portilla (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editories, 2006), 192.
a prickly pear worm (see the DFC for an image and a description) Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 105v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/105v/images/7662bed4-... Accessed 8 November 2025.
a bright star of the morning (see Molina); the morning star (Sahagún)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 7 -- The Sun, Moon, and Stars, and the Binding of the Years, Number 14, Part 8, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1953), 11.
a personal name, "Comet" or, literally, "He Smokes Like a Star;" this name was held by a tlahtoani of Quiahuiztlan, Tlaxcala, at the time of the Spanish invasion; other people also had this name, and it has lived on in Mexico to the present day
a place name, mentioned in the Codex Mendoza (c. 1541) on folio 17 verso; referenced in a Relación Geográfico in 1557 (Berdan, Aztec Imperial Strategies, 1996, 237); also, a mountain (see attestations)
Antonio Rincón, Arte mexicana: Vocabulario breve, que solamente contiene todas las dicciones que en esta arte se traen por exemplos (1595), 35r.>/bibl>
a grandmother; or, the sister of one's grandfather, great aunt (see Molina and Karttunen); or a hare, jack rabbit (and hares, in the plural, cicihtin) -- both grandmother and hare are cihtli in the singular, with the glottal stop; grandmothers is cihtin (which might also be seen as citin)