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Teteoinnan.

Headword: 
Teteoinnan.
Principal English Translation: 

the name of a deity, "Mother of the Gods" (or Gods-Their-Mother); a major aspect of the terrestrial-maternal-fertility deity complex
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 61.

She was also named Tlalli yiollo (i.e. Tlalli iyollo; "Heart of the Earth") and Toci ("Our Grandmother"). Her powers were associated with healing, and therefore she was a favorite of physicians, including eye doctors, and of midwives. There are several paragraphs in this source with more detailed information about her. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 1 -- The Gods; No. 14, Part 2, 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, 1950), 4.

she was paired with Teteointa ("Father of the Gods" or "Gods-Their-Father"); both were part of the Xiuhtecuhtli Complex of deities, associated with fire and paternalism
"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: 
Teteu ynan, Teteo innan
Attestations from sources in English: 

no vmpa via y teteu ynan yoã conxuchimacaya y xucutl, ioã = Teteoinnan also went there and offered flowers to the xocotl.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 61.

This deity also bore other names, such as Toci, "Our Grandmother," and Tlalli iyollo, "Heart of the Earth." And she was iconographically and conceptually related to Tlazolteotl, "Filth Goddess."
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 102.