HUĀC-TLI (1), onomatopoetic, Laughing Falcon (Herpetotheres cachinnans) [FC: 42 Oactli] “It resembles the . It sings in this manner; sometimes it laughs like some man; like a man speaking it can pronounce these words: yeccan, yeccan, yeccan. When it laughs, it says ha ha ha ha ha, ha hay,ha hey, hay hay, ay.” Especially when it finds its food it really laughs.” Undoubtedly, the Laughing Falcon. This name is a homophone of the name of the Black-crowned Night-Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax), see below, HUAC-TLI2. Both are onomatopoetic.
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); 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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.
HUĀC-TLI (2), onomatopoetic, Black-crowned Night-Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) [FC: 39 Oactli] “It is a duck . It is named uactli because its song is like uactli. It makes [the sound] uac, uac. It is the size of a rooster. The crown of the head is black, [but] white [feathers] are placed on each side of its head, and at its crown lie three plumes inclined toward the back of its neck – white, well curved. Its bill is black, rounded…. Its wings, its wing-tips are ashen; its feet yellow, with claws – long claws. It eats fish and frogs. It always lives here; it rears its young here. Its eggs are four or five…. What is told of this Black-crowned night-heron [applies to] the hen. But the male … is not very large – only of average size, and all of its feathers are ashen.” This is no doubt the Black-crowned Night-Heron, though the Aztec scribes seem to have confused the immature plumage with that of the male. This name is a homophone of the name of the Laughing Falcon (Herpetotheres cachinnans), see above, HUAC-TLI1. Both are onomatopoetic.
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); 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.
a bird; when cooked could be used in a recipe for treating "incipient contraction of the knees"
Martín de la Cruz, Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis; manuscrito azteca de 1552; segun traducción latina de Juan Badiano; versión española con estudios comentarios por diversos autores (Mexico: Fondo de Cultural Económica; Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, 1991), 53 [36v.].
the Lord Speaker of Cuauhtitlan, Huactli
Miguel León-Portilla and Jorge Klor de Alva, In the Language of Kings (2001), 185.