Ipalnemohuani.

Headword:

Ipalnemohuani.

Principal English Translation:

"He Through Whom One Lives," or that which, or by means of which, people live; Giver of Life; a deity that is part of the Ometeotl Complex, primordial parents of deities and humans, creation; also came to be used to refer to the Christian god
"Table 3. Major Deities of the Late Pre-Hispanic Central Mexican Nahua-Speaking Communities." Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 6: Social Anthropology, ed Manning Nash (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967).

Orthographic Variants:

ypalnimohualoni, ipalnemoani, ypalnemohuani, ipalnemouani

IPAspelling:

iːpɑlnemowɑni

Frances Karttunen:

ĪPALNEMOHUANI possessed form, prefixed with third person singular possessive Ī- that one through whom living goes on, giver of life / por quien se vive (C), Dios, por quien se vive (C) There are three attestations (Bf.1r,2r,7r) of longer form ĪPALNEMOHUALŌNI. NEMOHUA is the nonactive form of NEM(I) ‘to live,’ and an alternate, through infrequent, nonactive form is with -HUALŌ. B also has attestations in which the HU is not written and the A, the preceding O, or both are marked long, but this is an –OHUA, not an –OĀ derivation, in spite of the fact that it is almost always spelled ipalnemoani. The possessive prefix is bound with –PAL, not with the whole construction. See –PAL, NEM(I). ĪPALNEMOHUALŌNI See ĪPALNEMOHUANI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 107.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:

giver of life, the deity. -pal, instrumental noun from nemi.
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 220.

Attestations from sources in English:

quetzaliyexochitica on tlalihcuiloa tlalticpac ye nican ipalnemohuani = Life Giver painting the earth with plume-incense flowers. (central Mexico, ca. 1582)
John Bierhorst, Ballads of the Lords of New Spain (Austin: University of Texas Press, UTDigital, 2009), f. 6r.; http://utdi.org/book/index.php?page=songs.php

tto dios ypalnemohualoni = Our Lord God the Giver of Life (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fray Alonso de Molina, Nahua Confraternities in Early Colonial Mexico: The 1552 Nahuatl Ordinances of fray Alonso de Molina, OFM, ed. and trans., Barry D. Sell (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2002), 100–111.

ipalnemoani = the one through whom living goes on; i.e. the Christian God, a reinterpretation of a Nahuatl term in the Christian context (Juan Bautista, Mexico City, 1599?)
Susanne Klaus, Uprooted Christianity: The Preaching of the Christian Doctrine in Mexico, Based on Franciscan Sermons of the 16th Century Written in Nahuatl (Bonn: Bonner Amerikanistische Studien e. V. c/o Seminar für Völkerkunde, Universität Bonn, 1999), 144.

yn ipalnemohuani totecuiyo dios = he by whom one lives, our lord God (late sixteenth century, Central Mexico)
Louise M. Burkhart, Before Guadalupe: The Virgin Mary in Early Colonial Nahuatl Literature, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Monograph 13 (Albany: University at Albany, 2001), 88.

quē huel xoconchihua quen huel xoconcuili yxochiuh aya ypalnemoani = You must produce them! You must get Live Giver's flowers! (late sixteenth century, actually a passage from the Cantares Mexicanos)
Ballads of the Lords of New Spain: The Codex Romances de los Señores de la Nueva España, transcribed and translated by John Bierhorst (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 31.

In the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, the tlamacazque appear in the shape of town founders, who did penitence and therefore became deserving of founding towns or taking over existing towns. See the attestations from sources in Spanish here in our dictionary. Also, Cohuenan prays to Ipalnemohuani, the Tloque Nahuaque, asking that the people be given "titechtlamacehuia titechmacaz yn mauh y motepeuh" (you grant us, you give us your water, your hill, i.e. your altepetl) after seeing (having a vision of) the Tlachihualtepetl (apparently the pyramid at Cholula). And Quetzalcoatl answers that Cohuenan has earned the benefit of this becoming his altepetl, and the current inhabitants, the Toltecs, will abandon it. (sixteenth century, Quauhtinchan)
Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, eds. Paul Kirchhoff, Lina Odena Güemes, y Luis Reyes García (México: CISINAH, INAH-SEP, 1976), 143.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

Totecuiyohe tlaquehe ypalnemouanihe totepicaue toteyocoxcaue = Oh teuhctli nuestro, oh Tloque, oh Nauaque, oh Ipalnemouani, oh creator nuestro, oh hacedor nuestro! (Quauhtinchan, s. XVI)
Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, eds. Paul Kirchhoff, Lina Odena Güemes, y Luis Reyes García (México: CISINAH, INAH-SEP, 1976), 162, 158.

ipalnemoani = dador de la vida (de la poesía de Nezahualcóyotl)
La tinta negra y roja: Antología de poesía náhuatl, transl. Miguel León-Portilla (Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores, 2008), 30–31.

ipalnemouani = Dios; por quien vivimos y somos (citando a Torquemada 1943, II:21) (Quauhtinchan, s. XVI)
Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, eds. Paul Kirchhoff, Lina Odena Güemes, y Luis Reyes García (México: CISINAH, INAH-SEP, 1976), 136.

themes:

Origins (human, ethnic, towns)

Religion (Christian)

Religion (Indigenous)

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