Principal English Translation:
to make, construct, create something (see Karttunen and Molina); possibly also to determine, resolve, order, think, or invent (notes from work with Lockhart)
Alonso de Molina:
Yocoya. nitla. fabricar o componer algo. Prete. onitlayocox. Yocoya. nino. comedirse a hazer algo de su motiuo. pre. oninoyocox.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, f. 39v. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
YŌCOY(A) vt; pret: YŌCOX to make, construct, create something / fabricar o componer algo (M).
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 339.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
yocoya, nic. = to create, invent. Class 2: ōnicyōcox.
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), 242.
Attestations from sources in English:
Alva also opposed the use of "oquiyocox" to describe the act of creating the heavens and the earth in favor of the reverential form, "oquimochihuilli."
See Schwaller's comments in Bartolomé de Alva, A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634, eds. Barry D. Sell and John Frederick Schwaller, with Lu Ann Homza (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 12.
yoyocoya = invent, fabricate;
oquiyocox = he created it
final y or i can become x in preterite;
çan moyocox = did it on purpose
Robert Haskett and Stephanie Wood's notes from Nahuatl sessions with James Lockhart and subsequent research.
Attestations from sources in Spanish:
"...Uniendo esos elementos descubrimos que la palabra Mo - yocoya - tzin significa 'el señor que se piensa o se inventa a sí mismo'". .
Laurette Séjourné, Altamerikanische Kulturen: Antiguas culturas precolombinas (1975), 277.