⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

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

ayac.

Headword: 
ayac.
Principal English Translation: 

no one; nobody; or, for someone to be absent (see Lockhart)

Orthographic Variants: 
aiaac
IPAspelling: 
ɑjɑ:k
Alonso de Molina: 

Ayac. ninguno, o nadie o estar alguno ausente
Ayacan. aun en ninguna parte o lugar. Aduerbio.
Ayac çan moyocuyaz. nadie se atreuera a hazer. s. algo de su auctoridad.
Ayac ceme. ninguno dellos.
Ayac compoa. el que no estima en nada ni tiene respecto alos otros. Pre. ayac ocompouh.
Ayac yuan. no tiene par, o nadie se le compara.
Ayac yuiui. idem.
Ayac yxcotlachia. presuntuoso y soberuio.
Ayacma. nadie, o ninguno.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua mexicana y castellana, 1571 (www.idiez.org.mx), f. 3r.

Frances Karttunen: 

AYĀC no one / ninguno, o nadie (M) See AH-, ĀC.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 15.

Horacio Carochi / English: 

ayāc = no one
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 498.

yac noca, ayāc noca = no one favors me
ayac ihuihui, ayāc īhuīhuî= no one equals him
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 82–83, 446–47, 498.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

no one; nobody; or, for someone to be absent

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), 211.

Attestations from sources in English: 

See an image that represents ayac from the simplex glyph for Ayac Icniuh in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

aiaac mic in mexica = None of the Mexica died. (sixteenth century, central Mexico)
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 184.

ayac ypilçin = she has no children (Cuernavaca region, ca. 1540s)
The Book of Tributes: Early Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Censuses from Morelos, ed. and transl. S. L. Cline, (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1993), 126–127.

ayac quicuiliz = no one is to take it from him/her (formulaic phrase);
ayac quixitiniz = no one is to harm or violate it (formulaic phrase);
ayac quiquixtiliz = no one is to evict him/her (formulaic phrase) (Guadalajara, 1653)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 28, 174–175.

ayac ymiuh ychimal ayac yxochiuh ayac iyeuh toconyatitlani = No one’s darts, shields, flowers, tobacco do we send as messengers. (sixteenth century, central Mexico)
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, 60–61.

Ayāc niquitta. = I don't see anyone. Or, I see no one.
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 39.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

ayac guincuiliz = no se la quite nadie (Tlaxcala, 1609)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVII, vol. 3, Teresa Rojas Rabiela, et al, eds. (México: CIESAS, 2002), 62–63.

ayac yconetzin = no tiene hijos (Ocotelulco, 1596)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 1, Testamentos en castellano del siglo XVI y en náhuatl y castellano de Ocotelulco de los siglos XVI y XVII, eds. Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, y Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: CIESAS, 1999), 262–263.

ynic cayac oncan tlatos = no tienen que hablar los por venir;
ayac oncan tlatoz = no tiene ninguno qué habla ni decir
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVII, vol. 3, Teresa Rojas Rabiela, et al, eds. (México: CIESAS, 2002), 232–233.

ayac = ninguno; ayaque = ningunos
Rémi Siméon, Diccionario de la lengua náhuatl o mexicana (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1988), xlii.

yniccayac tlanecuillo = para que ningún acaparador (Cuauhtinchan, Puebla, s. XVI)
Luis Reyes García, "Ordenanzas para el gobierno de Cuauhtinchan, año de 1559," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 10 (1972), 262–263.