G

Letter G: Displaying 1 - 20 of 30
Orthographic Variants: 
Graviel, Grabiel, Gavriel

a saint's name given to indigenous men at baptism; interesting, too, for the orthographic variations that came in writing Nahuatl (and possibly indicative of pronunciation)

a Spanish-born Spaniard living in the Americas; increasingly, over time, this was a derogatory term; it may have originated as cachopin, a Nahuatl term for Spaniards (see our entry for cachopin)

greyhound, hunting dog

livestock -- usually ganado mayor and ganado menor, varying by the size of the animals, with sheep and goats, for example, being in the minor group, and can be found in the expression "sitio de ganado mayor" or "sitio de ganado menor," referring to stockraising estates
(a loanword from Spanish)

Orthographic Variants: 
ganan, cayanis

permanent employee, especially in a rural context (Lockhart); often indigenous community members who had gone to live on nearby estates (SW)
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), 217.

1. to rip up weeds with a hooked stick. 2. to hang clothing on a hook. 3. to hook s.t. and remove it from someplace.
Orthographic Variants: 
Gate

the name of one of the earliest friars, Fray Pedro de Gante, who created a school, San José de los Naturales, and taught Nahua youth

(ca. 1582, Mexico City)
Luis Reyes García, ¿Como te confundes? ¿Acaso no somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Biblioteca Lorenzo Boturini Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, 2001), 164–165.

a European name; e.g. fray Juan de Gaona was a Franciscan nahuatlato of the sixteenth century who worked with Hernando de Ribas

See Sell's comments in Bartolomé de Alva, A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634, eds. Barry D. Sell and John Frederick Schwaller, with Lu Ann Homza (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 28.

Orthographic Variants: 
Carçia

a Spanish last name, but it could also be used by indigenous people; e.g. don Lucas García, a ruler who visited Spain in 1562

Here in This Year: Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley, ed. and transl. Camilla Townsend, with an essay by James Lockhart (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 166–167.

expense(s)
(a loanword from Spanish)

Gemini, a zodiac sign
(a loanword from Spanish)

(central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 2, 128–129.

Orthographic Variants: 
geminis

gemini, a sign of the zodiac; actually, originally a loanword from Latin, although possibly similar in siixteenth-century Spanish; see Lori Boornazian Diel, The Codex Mexicanus: A Guide to Life in Late-Sixteenth-Century New Spain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018), 172.

general (often, part of the title given Hernando Cortés, Capitán General)
(a loanword from Spanish)

Orthographic Variants: 
gentilesme, gentilestlaca, getilestlaca, Jetileztlaca, tiJetilestlaca, tigentilestlaca

a gentile or a non-Christian person; this term is found in primordial titles in the plural to describe indigenous people prior to the coming of Christianity or even after contact
(a loanword from Spanish)

glory
(a loanword from Spanish)

Orthographic Variants: 
groioso

glorious
(a loanword from Spanish)

Orthographic Variants: 
governor, gouernador, gunvernador, gonvernador, gonbernador, combernador, cobernador, covernador, cobernatol, copelnatol, cobelnatol, gupernator, guuernador, journador

in this context, the highest officer of an indigenous municipality, a Native man; the term came into Nahuatl from Spanish governmental practice
The Tlaxcalan Actas: A Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Tlaxcala (1545-1627), eds. James Lockhart, Frances Berdan, and Arthur J.O. Anderson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986), 153.

In the Codex Mendoza, many different titles (e.g. tlacochtec[uh]tli and tlacatec[uh]tli on 17 verso), in Nahuatl were glossed "gobernador;" gobernador was not just the translation for tlahtoani. In fact, the two titles, tlacochtecuhtli and tlacatecuhtli are paired for both of the two pueblos mentioned on this folio, as though they worked together, and both titles are glossed "governador," as though each pueblo once had these two governing leaders. We see the same pairing for a town on 18 recto, but there we also see that another town's governors had the titles tezcacoacatl and tlilancalqui. (SW)

to serve as municipal governor (partly a loanword from Spanish, gobernador, municipal governor)

grace
(a loanword from Spanish)

grammar
(a loanword from Spanish)