tepi. | Nahuatl Dictionary

tepi.

Headword:

tepi.

Principal English Translation:

1) a servant woman; an older sister; also, a person's name (attested as female)

2) little; apparently a shortened version of -tepiton, which can also go to -tepito, dropping the final "n," not at all unusual (see below); but perhaps -tepiton also gets reduced to -tepi. See James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written (2002, 234), where he identifies -tepi as "little." Finally, glyphs for Tlaltepi and Xoctepi appear to use -tepi to mean little. See the Matricula de Huexotzinco, folios 506r, 608r, and 622r.

IPAspelling:

tepi

Alonso de Molina:

tepi. criada o siruienta y hermana mayor.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 102v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English:

içivauh ytoca tepiu [sic] = His wife is named Tepi. (Cuernavaca region, ca. 1540s)
The Book of Tributes: Early Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Censuses from Morelos, ed. and transl. S. L. Cline, (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1993), 150–151.