Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

ilamatototl.

Headword: 
ilamatototl.
Principal English Translation: 

Canyon Towhee, a bird (see Hunn, attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
ilamatotol, ilama totol
Alonso de Molina: 

ilama totol. aue solitaria.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 37r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

ILAMA-TŌTŌ-TL, literally, “old woman bird,” Canyon Towhee (Melozone fuscus) [FC: 47 Ilamatototl] “It is ashen, chalky; ashen-backed. It is roundish, blunt-billed. It has a small crest. Its home is everywhere in settlements.” Canyon Towhee. This common village bird seems to best fit the description.
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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

themes: 
Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.
See also: 
ilama.
tototl.
tōtōtl.