hueyac. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

hueyac.

Principal English Translation:

long, a measure of length; when a parcel of land is a rectangle with two dimensions, the "hueyac" (or "huiyac") is the longer of the two measurements

Orthographic Variants:

huiyac, hueac, huiac, veyac, hueyac, uiac, ueyac, viac, viyac, veiac beyac

IPAspelling:

weːjɑk

Alonso de Molina:

ueyac. cosa larga o luenga.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 155v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Horacio Carochi / English:

hueyac = long
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 444-45; 502.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:

something long. a pret. agentive form probably derived from huēi(y)a to grow large. vowel quantity not well attested; originally long e probably neutralized before the glide, since it was being weakened to i. The a was possibly long. 218
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), 218.

Attestations from sources in English:

nochinan macuiltetl yn natentlaltzin amo huihuiyac çan tepitoto = five chinampas of mine at the edge of the water, not long but just small (Culhuacan, 1580)
Testaments of Culhuacan (provisionally modified first edition), eds. Sarah Cline and Miguel León-Portilla, online version http://www.history.ucsb.edu/cline/testaments_of_culhuacan.pdf, 18.

epovalcoyavac napovalviyac = 60 wide, 80 long (Coyoacan, mid-sixteenth c.)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 18, 110–111.

Also attested as viac and huiac in the list of properties belonging to don Juan de Guzmán, the gobernador of Coyoacán. (Coyoacan, mid-sixteenth c.)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 26, 158.

yz ca yn imil yn ipa nezi thlacalaquili mathlacmatl yc pathlauhac zepouhali yc uhyac yn ipan quinesti thlacalaquili y nauapouhaltiquiuha zeçvtl yc cexiuhtl oquiça ze y quavhnauhacayotl zetetl canauhac ça ysquich = Here is his field on which the tribute in kind is produced: [the field is] 10 matl wide and 20 long, on which he produces the tribute in kind. Every 80 days [he delivers] one quarter-length [of a cloak], so that in one year it turns out to be one [whole] Cuernavaca cloak and one [whole] narrow cloak. That is all. (Cuernavaca region, ca. 1540s)
The Book of Tributes: Early Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Censuses from Morelos, ed. and transl. S. L. Cline, (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1993), 116–117.

nochina yn ōpa temi tecuitlaapa matlactetl çecenpohualhuiyac = there are 10 chinampas of mine in Tecuitlaapan, each one 20 [units of measurement] long (Culhuacan, 1580)
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), 192.

huiac = long (inic huiac = how long, i.e. its length is)
The Testaments of Culhuacan, eds. S. L. Cline and Miguel León-Portilla (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1984), 26.

hueyac = length, big
See also the entry for huitlatztoc.
Robert Haskett and Stephanie Wood's notes from Nahuatl sessions with James Lockhart and subsequent research.

inic huiaco inic hueyac = as to its length, or in length
auh yn tlalli onca mani xalatlauhtenco ynic huiac xxx quahuitl ynic patlahuac xv quahuitl = The land is at Xalatlauhtenco, thirty quahuitl long and fifteen quahuitl wide.
Rebecca Horn, Postconquest Coyoacan: Nahua-Spanish Relations in Central Mexico, 1519–1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 153–54.

yetetemin yehepohualhuiyac = each one 60 (units) long
The Testaments of Culhuacan, eds. S. L. Cline and Miguel León-Portilla (provisionally modified first edition), on line: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/cline/testaments_of_culhuacan.pdf, 123.

Where we might expect to see hueyac in a late sixteenth-century Tlaxcalan testament, we see nehuitzanalli. (See notes from sources in Spanish.)

veiac = long (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), 132.

"hueyac" is 204 and "patlahuac" is 64 varas castellanas for "ce tlatli" in Toluca in 1750; Another "tlali" with a "cali" measures in patlahuac 30 and in huiyac 41 "bara" in Xolalpa, part of Toluca, in 1722; and a tlaltzintli is 97 varas castellanas "hueyac" and 41.25 varas in "patlahuac" also in Xolalpa perhaps around the year 1700.
Stephanie Wood collection, notes from a Bills of Sale folder; for the first example, citing the Archivo General del Estado de México, RPEM 6, exp. 4, ff. 1r.–v. and 4r.–v.; for the second example, the same volume, but exp. 5, 4v.–5v.; and, for the third example, the same volume, exp. 6, ff. 1r.–2v.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

chiquacenpoual nehuitzanali napoual coyauatiuh = ciento veinte brazas del pie a la mano y de ancho ochenta
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 1, Testamentos en castellano del siglo XVI y en náhuatl y castellano de Ocotelulco de los siglos XVI y XVII, eds. Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, y Constantino Medina Lima (Santa Bárbara Tamascolco, 1598), 290–291.

icueueyac opouallalquauitl = de largo cuarenta palos (Santa Bárbara)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 1, Testamentos en castellano del siglo XVI y en náhuatl y castellano de Ocotelulco de los siglos XVI y XVII, eds. Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, y Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: CIESAS, 1999), 240–241.

castolpoualuayan = trecientas de largo (Santa Bárbara)
Vidas y bienes olvidados: Testamentos indígenas novohispanos, vol. 1, Testamentos en castellano del siglo XVI y en náhuatl y castellano de Ocotelulco de los siglos XVI y XVII, eds. Teresa Rojas Rabiela, Elsa Leticia Rea López, y Constantino Medina Lima (Mexico: CIESAS, 1999), 236-237.

ynic patlauac matlacmatl auh ynic uiac chicuepouali = de ancho tiene dies brazas y de largo ciento sesenta (Ciudad de Mexico, 1558)
Luis Reyes García, Eustaquio Celestino Solís, Armando Valencia Ríos, et al, Documentos nauas de la Ciudad de México del siglo XVI (México: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social y Archivo General de la Nación, 1996), 98.

auh ome quauitzcuintli veveyacqui = y dos quauitzcuintli largos [y dice en la nota: asiento de madera] (Cuauhtinchan, Puebla, s. XVI)
Luis Reyes García, "Ordenanzas para el gobierno de Cuauhtinchan, año de 1559," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 10 (1972), 254–255.

xxx ic Beyac ,Ycuen Juan Xaltepoziztli, Yc patlahuac hepohualmatl ipan ematl = 30 de largo, Tierra de Juan Xaltepoziztli, De largo [sic] sesenta [sic; y tres] brazas (Tlaxcala, 1567)
Catálogo de documentos escritos en náhuatl, siglo XVI, vol. I (Tlaxcala: Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala y el Archivo Histórico del Estado de Tlaxcala, 2013), 103.

zentetl tlali...nauhpohualli ynic huehcapan auh ynic patlahuac zenpoval matl = una tierra...ochenta brazas de largo y de ancho treinta brazas (Tlaxcala, 1600)
Catálogo de documentos escritos en náhuatl, siglo XVII, Serie Administrativa (1600–1699), vol. II (Tlaxcala: Gobierno del Estado de Tlaxcala y el Archivo Histórico del Estado de Tlaxcala, 2013), 1–2.

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Measurements, Quantities