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tlanelhuatl.

Headword: 
tlanelhuatl.
Principal English Translation: 

root, base, foundation
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 237.

IPAspelling: 
tɬɑnelwɑːtɬ
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

analysis unclear, but nelhua- appears in many other words having to do with roots and foundations. 237

Attestations from sources in English: 

niman ye yc quauhtzotzona yn oztotenpa ynic oncan quinelhuayotique yn yehuatl altepetl. yn ical yn iteocal yn huitzilopochtli = Thereupon they hammered in wood [piles] at the cave's mouth. Thus they made a foundation for the city and Huitzilopochtli's house, his temple. (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 1, 108–109.

quinpixotehuac iuhquima ynquauhtzonyo in ye cuel teyxhuihuan yn huehue teçoçomoctli tlahtohuani azcapotzalco, auh yehuatl ynelhuayo y nohuian tlahtoque = He scattered his seed as founding ancestor of [his] grandsons, [including] Huehue Teçoçomoctli, ruler of Azcapotzalco. He was the genealogical starting point of rulers everywhere.
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 2, 64–65.

Tree parts, including the roots (tlanelhuatl and cuauhnelhuatl), are identified in the Florentine Codex, Book 11.
Sahagún, Bernardino de, Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino, et al. Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Florentine Codex), Ms. Mediceo Palatino 218–20, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, MiBACT, 1577. Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter, Alicia Maria Houtrouw, Kevin Terraciano, Jeanette Peterson, Diana Magaloni, and Lisa Sousa, bk. 11, fol. 117r. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/117r . Accessed 12 November 2025.

themes: 
Family, Kinship, Descent
Origins (human, ethnic, towns)
Plants, Trees, Flora