Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

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

toztli.

Headword: 
toztli.
Principal English Translation: 

Yellow-headed Amazon parrot, adult (a bird -- see Hunn, attestations)

See the hieroglyph for yellow parrot in the Codex Mendoza.
Published in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-). https://aztecglyphs.wired-humanities.org/content/toztli-mdz46r

And a painting of a toztli in the Florentine Codex:
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 23r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/23r/images/0 Accessed 16 October 2025.

Attestations from sources in English: 

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

TOZ-TLI, Yellow-headed Amazon, adult (Amazona oratrix) [FC: 23 Toztli]: “When the young yellow-headed parrot is already developed, it turns yellow, it becomes very yellow. It develops fluffy feathers. When completely feathered, then it is called toztli.
Fr. Bernardino ]de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 11 – Earthly Things, no. 14, Part XII, 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, 1963); and, with quotation selections, synthesis, and analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

oc ceppa iuhqujn tipiltzintli timuchioa in titoztli, tichalchivitl, titeuxivitl = Once again thou becomest as a baby. Thou becomest, thou art hatched a young parrot, a precious green stone, a precious turquoise (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), 32.

themes: 
Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.
Colors
See also: 
toznenetl.