teixhuiuh.

Headword: 
teixhuiuh.
Principal English Translation: 

grandchild, relative, descendant, or heirs (see attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
tēixhuīuh, teixuiuh, teisuiuh, teyxuiuh, teixhuiho; plural = teixhuihuan
Alonso de Molina: 

teixuiuh. nieto, o nieta.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 96r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription. Same term, translated on other pages: niece, nephew, or cousin. From his Vocabulario, pt. 1, fols. 88v, 98v.
Personal communication from Mary McClave, 11 February 2026.

Attestations from sources in English: 

teixhuiuh = "grandchild"; in Tlaxcala, however, this is a dependent in a teccalli who may have had closer connections with the nobility and lighter duties than some other dependents; still, Lockhart noticed that the teixhuihuan were sometimes treated like "the bulk of the commoners belonging to the nobles" and "they must be considered commoners in some sense, or the cabildo would not expose them to city tribute work...."
The Tlaxcalan Actas: A Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Tlaxcala (1545-1627), eds. James Lockhart, Frances Berdan, and Arthur J.O. Anderson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986), 110, 154.

teixhuihuan (pl.) = someone's grandchildren; but this may have referred to a social unit of descent
Susan Kellogg, Law and the Transformation of Aztec Culture, 1500–1700 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 227.

Mary McClave shares more of the work from Susan Kellogg: "While tlacamecayotl may have functioned as a central descent concept and unit, there were other kinship concepts as well. One of these, teixhuihuan, was, as stated earlier, a descendant--rather than ancestor-focused concept, literally meaning 'someone's grandchildren.' This unit was apparently not based on lines but on groups of people, including at least the children and grandchildren of an individual. The Spanish translations of the Nahuatl terms for grandchildren often referred to a wider group of kin than simply grandchildren. In one document, the phrase yn inpilhuan yn [te]ixhuihua was translated as todos sus descendientes (all their descendants; AGN-HJ 298, no. 4: fols. 4r, 13v). The term could not have meant grandchildren here, since it referred to a couple with no living grandchildren or children mentioned. Rather, the phrase was used to express the idea that when these people completed buying the property, their descendants would have the right to inherit it. Another example is an order of sale in which the phrase teixhuiuh tepiltzin, translated as un deudo descendiente (a descendant relative) in the Spanish, referred to a woman's brother's daughter and not to a grandchild (AGN-T 42-5: fols. 8r–13v). Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the term teixhuihuan is through a less literal translation, 'all one's potential descendants.'"
McClave cites Kellogg: “Kinship and Social Organization in Early Colonial Tenochtitlan,” in Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, edited by Victoria Reifler Bricker, vol. 4, Ethnohistory, edited by Ronald Spores with the assistance of Patricia A. Andrews (University of Texas Press, c1986; 2nd pr., 1997), p. 111.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

amo teixhuiho cuemitl = no es de los nietos el terreno (Tlaxcala, 1562)
Catálogo de documentos escritos en Náhuatl, siglo XVI, vol. I (México, Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala, 2013), 24.

Auh inica teisuiuh notatzin quipiaya çan no nican ytech pouiz yn ixiptlah = Y los teixiuas de la parte de mi padre que él tenía, sean ansimesmo sujetos al que dejo en mi lugar (Ocotelulco, Tlaxcala, 1562)
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), 128–129.

yn ixquich nican poui tecalco. Yuan in ixquich teyxuiuh nican poui çan iuh ytech pouih tiyezque nochipa ytech pohui yn teccalli = y todo lo perteneciente a la casa de mayorazgo... Íten, asimismo todos los teixiuas que con la casa de mayorazgo se cuenta, siempre se esté en pie y estén continuos a la casa de mayorazgo. (Ocotelulco, Tlaxcala, 1562)
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), 126–127.