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Quecholli.

Headword: 
Quecholli.
Principal English Translation: 

an aquatic bird with rich red plumage, or the red/pink feathers themselves (see attestations)

IPAspelling: 
ketʃoːlli
Frances Karttunen: 

QUECHŌL-LI bird with red plumage; flamingo or roseate spoonbill; the plumage of such a bird / pájaro de pluma rica (M), pájaro de brillante plumaje muy solicitado; algunos autores lo han llamado flamenco; pluma de dicho pájaro (S) [(1)Cf.76v], This attestation is of TLĀUHQUECHŌL-LI 'red flamingo,' which is redundant in English translation but not in Nahuatl, since QUECHŌL refers not to the color of the bird but apparently to the characteristic sweeping motion of its neck. Elsewhere in Nahuatl literature QUECHŌL-LI often appears without the modifying TLĀUH without alteration of sense, as illustrated in the gloss in S. It commonly occurs without the absolutive suffix. See QUECH-TLI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 206.

Attestations from sources in English: 

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

Quecholli = a month for bathing and sacrificing enslaved people (sixteenth century, central Mexico)
Charles E. Dibble, "The Xalaquia Ceremony," Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl 14 (1980), 197–202, see especially 199.

Quecholli = the name of a month of twenty days; this is also the name of a bird and a festival that involved the use of the birds' feathers
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 174. 178.

quecholli = "precious bright feathers" festival
Angel Julián García Zambrano, "Ancestral Rituals of Landscape Exploration and Appropriation among Indigenous Communities in Early Colonial Mexico," in Sacred Gardens and Landscapes: Ritual and Agency, ed. Michel Conan (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Harvard University Press, 2007), 215.

quechol = swan; frequently amplified as teoquechol, "spirit swan," or tlauhquechol, "roseate swan." But, [a] roseat swan in everyday diction is indeed the roseate spoonbill (Ajaia ajaja), but the Linnean designation is unsuitable for translating the term as it appears in the netotiliztli [song collections], where we also find such forms as ayopalquechol, 'auburn swan,' chalchiuhquecho, 'jade swan,' and cuauhquechol, 'eagle swan,' among yet others, and even the verb quecholti, 'to become a swan.' (The translational solution 'swan' is not meant to denote Cygnus but 'swan' in the sense of such English expressions as 'sweet swan of Avon' or 'swan knight,' connoting musicianship or transport to the other world."
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), 35.

"During the month of Quecholli, bathed slaves were sacrificed in honor of Mixcoatl." And when the month ended "there was entering into the sand, then those who were to die entered the sand.... They took them in procession around the sacrificial stone." (sixteenth century, central Mexico)
Charles E. Dibble, "The Xalaquia Ceremony," Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl 14 (1980), 197–202, see especially 199.

juo tequechol (a person's name; the gloss next to the name shows a bird's head, quecholli, and a stone, tetl) (Tepetlaoztoc, sixteenth century)
Barbara J. Williams and H. R. Harvey, The Códice de Santa María Asunción: Facsimile and Commentary: Households and Lands in Sixteenth-Century Tepetlaoztoc (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997), 108–109.

quecholli = a pink aquatic bird (Carochi)

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

"Las fuentes novohispanas están divididas en cuanto a la traducción de la palabra quecholli. Para Torquemada (1975-1983: III, 403, 426, 427 [libro 10, capítulos 26, 35]), el nombre de la veintena quecholli se relaciona con el teoquechol o tlauhquechol, una ave acuática de plumas valiosas que puede ser identificada con un grado razonable de certeza con la cuchareta rosada (Ajaia ajaja). Esta ave es llamada 'flamenca' por Torquemada, pero las descripciones de este autor y de Sahagún (1979: III, 20v, 21r [libro 11, capítulo 2, párrafo 1]) dejan en claro que no se trata del ave que ahora llamamos 'flamenco' (Phoenicopterus ruber), sino de la cuchareta rosada, especialmente porque ambos autores hacen hincapié en el hecho de que esta ave tiene un pico parecido al del pato. A esta conclusión llegaron Dibble y Anderson en su traducción del Códice florentino (Sahagún, 1974-1982: XII, 20 [libro 11, capítulo 2, párrafo 1]). Sobre las aves mencionadas, véase Peterson/Chalif, 1989: 32, 34. Otros autores novohispanos traducen quecholli como algún tipo de proyectil, sea una flecha tirada con el arco, un dardo lanzado con el atlatl o una especie de lanza (Anders/Jansen [editores], 1996a: 41v; Doesburg/Carrera [editores, 1996: 100v; Durán, 1967: I, 281 [Libro de los ritos, capítulo 17]; Tovar, 1951: lám. 11)."
Parte de la información proveída por David Wright en la lista Nahuat-L, 10 dic. 2010. Sería valiosa consultar su comentario entero en los archivos de la lista.

themes: 
Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.
Feathers
Religion (Indigenous)
Slavery