ecacoatl. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

ecacoatl.

Principal English Translation:

a hurricane whirlwind (see Molina); also, the name of a person and the name of a snake (see below)

Orthographic Variants:

Yecacovatl, ehcacoatl

IPAspelling:

ehkɑkoːɑːtɬ

Alonso de Molina:

ecacoatl. manga tal.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 28r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English:

ecacoatl (or ehcacoatl, with the glottal stop) = a snake that crawls along the ground with most of its body in the air, while its tail remains on the ground. It is very long, three or four "brazas" in length. It is colorful. See the painting of it in the DFC.
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 87r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/87r/images/0 Accessed 3 November 2025.

yn iyoquich ytoca yecacovatl = Her husband is named Ecacoatl. (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), 164–165.

Ecatl can mean air or breath. Ehecatl refers to wind, and it is the name of a divine force (or deity), as the links below to related terms will reveal. (SW)

themes:

Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.

Names (for people, deities)

Weather, Climate