Principal English Translation:
a gopher (see Karttunen); or, a field mouse (see Siméon)
Alonso de Molina:
tozan. topo, animal o rata.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 148r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
tuzan. lo mesmo es que tozan.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 151r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
TOZAN gopher / topo, animal, o rata (M) [(1)Tp.240,(4)Zp.126,150,225]. M has the gloss ‘mole’, but the animal currently known in Mexican Spanish as tuza is the gopher, which is also in keeping with the rest of M’s gloss.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 249.
Attestations from sources in English:
Ҫaҫan tleino, tetzavilama tlallan tlaquaqua. Toҫan = What is that which is a terrifying old woman who gnaws under the earth? The gopher (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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), 238.
Attestations from sources in Spanish:
tuça, tuçan = ratón de campo
Rémi Siméon, Diccionario de la lengua náhuatl o mexicana (México: Siglo XXI, 1996), xxxvii.
Ҫaҫan tleino, tetzavilama tlallan tlaquaqua. Toҫan = Que cosa y cosa, vna vieja mostruosa debaxo de tierra anda comjendo o ruyẽdo. Es el topo (centro de Mexico, s. XVI)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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), 238.