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zoyatl.

Headword: 
zoyatl.
Principal English Translation: 

a palm tree (see Molina)

Orthographic Variants: 
zuyatl
IPAspelling: 
soːyɑːtɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

zoyatl. palma.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 25r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

zuyatl. palma.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 27v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

ZŌYĀ-TL palm tree / palma (M) [(1)Tp.173, (2)Zp.93,203, (2)Xp.82]. T has this with a short vowel in the first syllable and the reflex of Ō in the second.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 349.

Attestations from sources in English: 

In one of the sixteenth-century RG maps, the palm may have served in pictography as possibly a homophonic substitute for zohuatl, intending cihuatl or cihuayo (womanhood or female genitalia).
See Barbara E. Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciones Geográficas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 244, note 14.

themes: 
Plants, Trees, Flora
Sexuality, Fertility, Reproduction
Women, Men, Gender