citli. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

citli.

Principal English Translation:

a grandmother; or, the sister of one's grandfather, great aunt (see Molina and Karttunen); or a hare, jack rabbit (and hares, in the plural, cicihtin) -- both grandmother and hare are cihtli in the singular, with the glottal stop; grandmothers is cihtin (which might also be seen as citin)

Orthographic Variants:

cihtli

IPAspelling:

sihtɬi

Alonso de Molina:

citli. liebre, abuela, o tia hermana de abuelo.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 22v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

CIH-TLI pl: CIHTIN grandmother, or sister of one’s grandfather / abuela, o tía hermana de abuelo (M) M combines CIH-TLI ‘grandmother’ with CIH-TLI ‘hare’ in a single entry. C also glosses CIH-TLI as ‘abuela o liebre.’ but while he gives CIHTIN as the plural of this, he goes on to repeat twice that the plural of ‘hare’ involves reduplication, CĪCIHTIN . In this case, the two items contrast in the plural although they are homophonous in the singular. X has CĪZ-TLI for ‘grandmother,’ CIH-TLI for ‘hare.’
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 34.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:

cihtli; also, hare (but the latter is usually not possessed)
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), 215.

Attestations from sources in English:

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

cicitin (plural)
Antonio Rincón, Arte mexicana: Vocbulario breve, que solamente contiene todas las dicciones ue en esta arte se traen por exemplos (1595), 5v.

in teci tzone, izte, yxquamule, tentzone, yxuiua, cacamaio, tzicueuallo, vitzio, auaio.
Yn qualli citli quauitl tetl quitetoctiani, tehutequiani teixtlamachtiani = One's grandmother has noble descendants.
The good grandmother [is] a reprimander, a leader of an exemplary life, a counselor. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, 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), 5.

noci, nocitzin = my grandmother
Robert Haskett and Stephanie Wood's notes from Nahuatl sessions with James Lockhart and subsequent research.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

nechmocahuililitaque ynotatzin ynonantzi yncoltzin ynosintzin = me fueron dejando mi padre y mi madre, mi abuelo y mi abuela (Acolma, 1581)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 2, Testamentos en náhuatl y castellano del siglo XVI, eds., Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Ciencias Tecnología, 1999), 240–241.

Oquitac icihtzin, yohpacihtzin, iyexpacihtzin, yicnehuan ihuan itahtzin quitlahpalotiquizqueh. = Vio a su abuela, a su bisabuela, a su tatarabuela, a sus hermanos y a su padre que lo pasaron a saludar. (s. XX, Milpa Alta)
Los cuentos en náhuatl de Doña Luz Jiménez, recop. Fernando Horcasitas y Sarah O. de Ford (México: UNAM, 1979), 82–83.

themes:

Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.

Family, Kinship, Descent