cochotl. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

cochotl.

Principal English Translation:

a parrot; a beautiful bird "whose feathers are primarily green"
Francesco Saverio Clavigero, The History of Mexico (London: J. Johnson, 1807), 55.

Orthographic Variants:

cocho

IPAspelling:

kotʃotɬ

Alonso de Molina:

cochotl. papagayo.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 23r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English:

An image and a description of the cocho are found in the Florentine Codex. (SW)
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 23v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/23v/images/5d2fd01f-a... Accessed 15 October 2025.

cocho = an apocopation of chochotl
cocho = a white-fronted parrot
cochohmeh = parakeets
Gran Diccionario Náhuatl, citing Wimmer (2004), who draws from the Florentine Codex, among other sources. https://gdn.iib.unam.mx/diccionario/cocho/45262

Francisco Saverio Clavigero, The History of Mexico (1787, 55) discusses the "Huacamaya," the "Toznenetl," and the "Cochotl," as three species of parrots. (SW)

"1537 6 Cali xihuitl ... Yhuā texcoco ateco temoque otetl tlauhquecholtin Yhuā huel micque tozneneme cochome (f. 10v)" = "1537 6 House year ... And at Texcoco, two fancy birds came down to the shore. And a great number of yellow parrots and white-fronted parrots died." (Historia cronológica de la N.C. de Tlaxcala, 1310–1689)
Frances Krug, "The Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Region," ch. 5, p. 38, Ph.D. Dissertation draft written in the 1980s, with transcriptions and translations approved by James Lockhart. Cited here by SW.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

temoque otetl tlauhquecholtin yhuan huel mieque tozneneme cochome = bajaron dos flamingos y muchos pericos y loros (Tlaxcala, 1662–1692)
Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Historia cronológica de la Noble Ciudad de Tlaxcala, transcripción paleográfica, traducción, presentación y notas por Luis Reyes García y Andrea Martínez Baracs (Tlaxcala and México: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Secretaría de Extensión Universitaria y Difusión Cultural, y Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1995), 142–143.

cocho = papagayo, loro

themes:

Feathers