Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

Atlahua.

Headword: 
Atlahua.
Principal English Translation: 

a divinity, divine force, sacred force; "Lord [Possessor] of the Spear-Thrower (atlatl)" -- known especially to the Chalmeca (people of Chalma); has human sacrifice associations; also a personal name
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 100, 107.

Orthographic Variants: 
atlava
Attestations from sources in English: 

Some also translate this as Lord (or Possessor) of the Water (or the Water's Edge). Relates to Amimitl and to the Chinampaneca, or people of the region of the freshwater lakes of Chalco and Xochimilco. (mid-sixteenth century; central Mexico)
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 100, 107–108, note 74.

Atlahua is a name still used in the 21st century in the Sierra de Zongolica, state of Veracruz. These authors suggest a translation of "el dueño del agua."
Ezequiel Jiménez Romero, Santos Carvajal García, Ramon Tepole González, and Jorge Luis Hernández, "Apellidos Nahuas Vigentes," published to Facebook by Ernestina Lara Cuevas on 30 May 2020.

themes: 
Gifts, Offerings, Sacrificial Rites
Names (for people, deities)
Religion (Indigenous)
Weapons, Shields, Heraldry