⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-17 - Repairs are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

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

mani.

Headword: 
mani.
Principal English Translation: 

to be (spread out); at, located at; is / are; to extend out (geographically)
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), 224.

Orthographic Variants: 
manic
IPAspelling: 
mɑni
Alonso de Molina: 

mani. nican. aqui esta el libro, plato, o lebrillo con agua. &c.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 52r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

mani topam. (pret. topam omanca.) los que nos rigen y gouiernan.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 52r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

MAN(I) irregular verb; prêt: MANCA for something flat to cover a surface, as water in a shallow pan, etc. / estar cosas llanas (C) M has the phrase nican mani with the gloss ‘here is the book, plate, or pan of water.’ There is a locative suffix –MĀN which, though close in sense, has a long vowel in its attestations in C. Z consistently has the corresponding vowel in MAN(I) long, but there is agreement across the other sources that the verb has a short vowel. See MAN(A). MANCA See MAN(I). Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 136.

Horacio Carochi / English: 

mani = to be (spread out) Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 506.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

mani, (ni.) to be extended over a flat surface, often translated simply as to be. used for "it is" a certain day of the month, usually translated as on that day, often employed as a -ti- auxiliary. irregular with present manic in some texts, and past usually manca (formally the pluperfect). intransitive counterpart of mana. 224
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), 224.

Attestations from sources in English: 

See an image that represents mani in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

cenca chicahuac manca quiyahuitl = the rains were very heavy (early seventeenth century, central New Spain)
Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. and transl. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 102–103.

oc Se pedaSo Solar nican Mantica tlaMimilolpa = another piece of a lot here in Tlamimilolpan (San Pedro Calimaya, Toluca Valley, 1755)
Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 195.

With lands, mani comes down to "to be." It used to have the meaning of being spread out. But in testaments, mani is more often associated with tlalli than ca or onoc or anything similar. Personal communication from James Lockhart

mantica = at (located at)
Caterina Pizzigoni, ed., Testaments of Toluca (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2007), 143.

oncan mani, ompa mani = at yn onpa mani yn itocayoca = at a place called
Rebecca Horn, Postconquest Coyoacan: Nahua-Spanish Relations in Central Mexico, 1519–1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 152.

neztimani = is / are, appear / appears at In the Techialoyan manuscripts, neztimani may be saying this is appearing in reference to what appears in the pictorial portion of the manuscripts.
James Lockhart, personal communication, December 19, 2007.

yn canin mamani altepetlali = where the town lands lie Byron McAfee, translation of the Techialoyan manuscript from Santa Mara Zolotepec or Ocelotepec; University of California, Los Angeles, Special Collections

moch niz neztimani = everything here stands on record Byron McAfee, translation of the Techialoyan manuscript from Santa Mara Zolotepec or Ocelotepec; University of California, Los Angeles, Special Collections

yn imanca = where something is (in older texts of a non-mundane nature) James Lockhart, personal communication, December 19, 2007.

in motetel, in motzaqual imanca = where thy mounds, thy pyramids are located (central Mexico, sixteenth century) Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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, 1961), 3.

Mani can also have a temporal location meaning, as with dates, i.e. in or on such and such a day. But we don't translate it when it means day -- just say the 13th, or whatever number. For example, we see "ic 22 ilhuitl mani de Junios 1586 años" (the 22nd of June, 1586) in the Nahuatl baptismal records from Tlatelolco.
Translation by Stephanie Wood. Manuscript in Caja 21, Archivo Histórico de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México, Convento Franciscano de San Gabriel, San Pedro Cholula, Puebla.  

yn intlamanitiliz catca yn oc yehuantin tlateotocanime / yn tachtoncohcolhuan catca in maca çan tlayohuayan yn oc ce cahuitl ipan onemico. yc motlapololtiaya yn ayemo yuh impan huallacia yn itlanextzin yn iximachocatzin yn ineltococatzin tto jesu xp̄ō. yn iuh axcan ipan ye ticate yn iteycnelilizticatzinco yn itepalehuilizticatzinco in titlaneltocacatzitzinhuan = This was the custom of our early ancestors, who were still idolaters living in darkness in [those] other times. Such was their confusion before the light, knowledge, and faith of our Lord Jesus Christ had reached them as now, in our times, [these benefits reach] us believers through His grace and favor. (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)

Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 2, 118–119.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

çan ix[qui]ch çacatimani = Todo estaba abandonado (Tetzcoco, 1572)
Benjamin Daniel Johnson, “Transcripción de los documentos Nahuas de Tezcoco en los Papeles de la Embajada Americana resguardados en el Archivo Histórico de la Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia de México”, en Documentos nahuas de Tezcoco, Vol. 1, ed. Javier Eduardo Ramírez López (Texcoco: Diócesis de Texcoco, 2018), 62–63.

Tonatiuh quixnamicti manic etemanic ynin yn tetlaliayan yez yhuan yn ithualli yn cepan ithual mochihuaz = La que está enfrente del sol, que está en tres piezas, éstas juntas han de estar que el patio, que nunca se quite y siempre ha de estar ansí (Xochimilco, 1621)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVII, vol. 3, Teresa Rojas Rabiela, et al, eds. (México: CIESAS, 2002), 128–129.

Yn nomil atlalli yzquican imamani yc ceccan Atzaqualoyan Tianquiztonco meyotoc etemani Teçoquipan ontemani = mis tierras de riego están una en el lugar que llaman (Atzacualoian), otra en Tianguistonco, poblada de magueyes, la tercera en dos suertes en el paraje que llaman Thezoquipan (Tetepango, Hidalgo, 1586) Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 264–265.

Yn nomil atlalli yzquican imamani yc ceccan Atzaqualoyan Tianquiztonco meyotoc etemani Teçoquipan ontemani = mis tierras de riego están una en el lugar que llaman (Atzacualoian), otra en Tianguistonco, poblada de magueyes, la tercera en dos suertes en el paraje que llaman Thezoquipan (Tetepango, Hidalgo, 1586)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 264–265.

auh ynic oca mani ymilditech Juan de Rosas catca = Y las que se encuentran siuadas junto a la sementera que fue de[l difunto] Juan de Rosas (Coyoacan, 1560)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 122–123.

yc omilhuitl mani meztli abril = a dos andados del mes de abril (San Juan Teotihuacan, 1563) Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 130–131.

mani (o) neztimani = se extienden (para hablar de tierras)
Xavier Noguez, Códice Techialoyan de San Pedro Tototepec (Estado de México), México, El Colegio Mexiquense A.C. y Gobierno del Estado de México, 1999), 33); neztimani = aparecen extendidas (las tierras) (44) manca = (pretérito) significa "estar cosas llanas, o en multitud;" manoa = (el impersonal) significa "todos están assi" (Tetzcoco, 1595) Antonio del Rincón, Arte mexicana, 33, reproducida digitalmente por el Internet Archive, http://archive.org/stream/artemexicana00rincrich/artemexicana00rincrich_....

themes: 
Time, Calendar, Frequency