⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-17 - Repairs are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

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.

ayotl.

Headword: 
ayotl.
Principal English Translation: 

a freshwater turtle (see Molina); also, a person's name (attested as male); sometimes the glyph for ayotl is really intended for yaotl (combatant, enemy)

Orthographic Variants: 
ayutl
IPAspelling: 
ɑːyoːtɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

ayotl. tortuga.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 3v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

ayutl. tortuga, o zumo de yeruas estrujadas.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 4r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

ĀYŌ-TL pl: -MEH turtle, tortoise / tortuga /K016/ (M) [(1)Tp.172,(3)Xp.29]. X does not mark the initial vowel long. See Ā-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 17.

Attestations from sources in English: 

See an image of the fresh water turtle in the Digital Florentine Codex.
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 63v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/63v/images/0 Accessed 25 October 2025.

See an image that represents ayotl in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

anto ayotl = Antonio Ayotl (Tepetlaoztoc, sixteenth century)
Barbara J. Williams and H. R. Harvey, The Códice de Santa María Asunción: Facsimile and Commentary: Households and Lands in Sixteenth-Century Tepetlaoztoc (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997), 83, 117, 144.

IDIEZ morfema: 
āyōtl.
IDIEZ traduc. inglés: 
turtle.
IDIEZ def. náhuatl: 
Ce piltecuanitzin iixnezca tenextic zo cafentic; quipiya ipancacallo chicahuac; itzontecon zan pilcuahuehueyacatzin; huan itztoc pan atl. “Ne ayotl nicamati pampa nelpilcuecuetzin. ”
IDIEZ def. español: 
# Tlat. Un animal que vive en el agua que tiene encima de el un caparazón duro. “Ofelia tenía una tortuga en su casa y después se murió porque no le daba de comer”.
IDIEZ gramática: 
tlat.
See also: 
yaotl.
ayotli.