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tetzon.

Headword: 
tetzon.
Principal English Translation: 

offspring (see Karttunen); or, a type of noble, male or female (see Sahagún)

Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, 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), 47.

Orthographic Variants: 
tētzon
IPAspelling: 
teːtson
Frances Karttunen: 

TĒTZON offspring / hijo, hija, descendiente (K) [(2)Bf.4V,6v]. This contrasts with TETZON-TLI 'stone foundation.'TĒTZON literally means 'someone's hair' and is conventionally paired with TĒIZTI 'someone's fingernail,' the whole phrase meaning 'offspring' in a generic sense. See TZON-TLI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 237.

Attestations from sources in English: 

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

tētzon = one's hair
Gordon Whittaker, Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 93.

"Tetzon, teizti, teaoayo, tetentzon, teixquamul, tetzicueuhca, tetlapanca = Someone's hair, nails; someone's thorns, briars; someone's beard, eyebrows; a chip off the block, and sliver from the same stick. This means someone born of nobility, of a noble family. He was also designated someone's blood, someone's red ink."
Thelma Sullivan and T.J. Knab, A Scattering of Jades: Stories, Poems, and Prayers of the Aztecs (1994), 208–209.

In tetzon, ocutl tlauilli quitocani, tezcatl itech mixcuicuitiani, tlilli tlapalli, quitemoani quitocani. = The one of noble lineage [is] a follower of the exemplary life, a taker of the good example of others; a seeker, a follower of the exemplary life. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, 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), 19.

in tetētzon mozcalia, tlanonotzalli, tlazcaltilli tlamachtilli = the one of noble lineage (is) discreet, well reared, well taught, well instructed
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, 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), 20.

tetzon = the hair of someone, metaphorical for someone's offspring or for a pilli (noble)
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 10: The People", fol. 11v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/10/folio/11v/images/0 Accessed 2 September 2025.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

Tetzon = señor o gouernador (OLM 212 : tetçon)
John Bierhorst, Códice Chimalpopoca (1992), 185.

themes: 
Children, Childhood, Adolescence
Family, Kinship, Descent
Social Hierarchy, Commoners, Elites