chiquimolin.

Headword: 
chiquimolin.
Principal English Translation: 

a gossiper (see Molina); Imperial Woodpecker, bird (see Hunn, attestations)

IPAspelling: 
tʃikimolin
Alonso de Molina: 

chiquimolin. chismero.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 21r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

CHIQUIMO-LIN, Imperial Woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis) [FC: 52 Chiqujmoli] “It is large as a grackle. It is crested. Dark colored is its crest; white its bill; black spotted with ashen are its feathers. Its throat is yellow…. Its food is tree worms; it extracts the worms from the trees. And it nests, it breeds within the tree; it makes a hole in the tree. And when its sings, it cries out much, it warbles, something like whistling with the fingers; and it sings as if there were many birds. And when it seems to shriek, it is angry…. And where there is contention, one is called chiquimolin for this reason.” Martin del Campo identified this as the Ladder-backed Woodpecker. Though it is clearly a woodpecker, the description would better fit a large crested species with a pale bill. The Pale-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus guatemalensis) is the closest contemporary candidate. However, given that this species was accorded exceptional respect, I suspect it could well have referred instead to the now-extinct (last reported 1956) Imperial Woodpecker, at one time the largest woodpecker in the world and historically resident in highland pine forest of the Sierra Madre Occidental south to near the Valley of Mexico (Howell & Webb).
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 11 – Earthly Things, no. 14, Part XII, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1963); Rafael Martín del Campo, “Ensayo de interpretación del Libro Undecimo de la Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún – 11 Las Aves (1),” Anales del Instituto de Biología Tomo XI, Núm. 1 (México, D.F., 1940); Steven N. G. Howell and Sophie Webb. A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America (Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, Tokyo, 1995); and, with quotation selections, synthesis, and analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

ma ticmocuitlahui in tlacatlatolli; ma yuhqui timaquizcoatl, tichiquimolin timochiuhtinen (Debe decir: tlatlatolli, de tlatlatoa —frecuentativo de tlatoa— hablar mucho) = ten cuidado de palabrerías; no andes haciendo como maquizcóatl, como chiquimolin (centro de México, s. XVI)
Josefina García Quintana, "Exhortación de un padre a su hijo; texto recogido por Andrés de Olmos," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 11 (1974), 172–173.