⚠ 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.

capellan.

(a loanword from Spanish)

Headword: 
capellan.
Principal English Translation: 

chaplain (see attestations)

Attestations from sources in English: 

"1530...omochiuhta capellan in motenehuatzin" (p. 740) = "1530...Motenehuatzin was named as chaplain." (Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, no. 1, part 1, 1519–1739). This was possibly for an expedition to Colhuacan, mentioned in various annals. But, on p. 65, Krug asserts that capellan is an error, and that capitán was likely meant. Furthermore, she suggests that Culiacán is more likely than Colhuacan as the destination of the expedition. So, one might await further attestations for capellan in Nahuatl documents to see how early it became a loanword from Spanish. (SW)
Frances Krug, "The Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Region," ch. 2, pp. 63–64, Draft Ph.D. dissertation written in the 1980s, with transcriptions and translations approved by James Lockhart. Cited here by SW.

themes: 
Religion (Indigenous Christianty)
War, Conflict