tlatzcan. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

tlatzcan.

Principal English Translation:

the cypress tree (see Molina)

IPAspelling:

tɬɑtskɑn

Alonso de Molina:

tlatzcan. cipres.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 142v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

TLATZCAN cypress / ciprés (M), cedro o ciprés (C) This abundantly attested in C. It also appears in Z with the absolutive suffix -TLI, but this is idiosyncratic to Z.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 300.

Attestations from sources in English:

"The Mexicans gave the name tlatzcan, or 'fragile and glassy wood,' to the tree that the ancients, Pliny among them, called the cypress...with the boughs extended sideways and almost inclining downward, from which its name comes." (Central Mexico, 1571–1615)
The Mexican Treasury: The Writings of Dr. Francisco Hernández, ed. Simon Varey, transl. Rafael Chabrán, Cynthia L. Chamberlin, and Simon Varey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 127.

Tlatzcan is an example of a suffixless noun (no -tl, -tli, or -in ending).
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 232.

Melton-Villanueva discusses the prevalence in Nahuatl testaments of the altepetl of San Bartolomé Tlatelolco, in the valley of Toluca, where people requested burial near the copal trees. Other "burial trees" were the cypress (tlatzcan), the date palm (icçotl, iczotl), and the pirul.
Miriam Melton-Villanueva, The Aztecs at Independence: Nahua Culture Makers in Central Mexico, 1799–1832 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016), 110.

The tlatzcan is described in the DFC Nahuatl text transcription and English and Spanish translations.
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 111r, Sahagún, Bernardino de. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain. Transcribed and translated with notes by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble. 2nd rev. ed. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research / University of Utah Press, 1950–82. Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/111r?spTexts=&nhTexts= Accessed 11 November 2025.

themes:

Plants, Trees, Flora

Wood, wooden material