⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

tocaitl.

Headword: 
tocaitl.
Principal English Translation: 

name

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), 239.

Orthographic Variants: 
tocaytl
IPAspelling: 
toːkɑːitɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

Tocaytl. nombre, fama y honra
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, f. 148r.

Frances Karttunen: 

TŌCĀ(I)-TL name, reputation / nombre, fama, y honra (M) Z retains the I in possessed form. This contrasts with TOCA-TL 'spider.'
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 242.

Attestations from sources in English: 

yvevetoca = his old-style name [i.e. prehispanic]
Sarah Cline, The Book of Tributes: The Cuernavaca-region Censuses, in James Lockhart, Lisa Sousa, and Stephanie Wood, eds., Sources and Methods for the Study of Postconquest Mesoamerican Ethnohistor, Preliminary Version (Eugene, OR: Wired Humanities Project, e-book, 2007.

ytoca: his, her, its name
Robert Haskett and Stephanie Wood's notes from Nahuatl sessions with James Lockhart and subsequent research.

ynin tocaytl yquac yn tlacati piltontli yquac caltia quimaca yn itoca ŷ tiçitl yoã y pilhoaque y yaviltoca ypipiltoca = These names [are given] when a baby is born. When the midwife bathes it, she and the parents give him his fun name, his child’s name (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, Primeros Memoriales, ed. Thelma D. Sullivan, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 254.

Notocah Ofelia. "My name is Ofelia." Queniuhqui motocah? "Whatʻs your name?" (Eastern Huastecan Nahuatl, modern)
Twitter idiezac post, May 2010.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

tle itoca on [tlein itoca on] = como se llama esso; tleitoca in nepaca [tlein itoca in nepaca] = como se llama aquello; tlein motoca = como te llamas
Pedro de Arenas, Vocabulario Manual de las Lenguas Castellana, y Mexicana (Mexico: Henrico Martínez, 1611), 11.

tocaitl = nombre; totoca = nuestro nombre
Rémi Siméon, Diccionario de la lengua náhuatl o mexicana (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1988), xlii.