⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

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

machtli.

Headword: 
machtli.
Principal English Translation: 

nephew, niece (of a man)

IPAspelling: 
mɑtʃtɬi
Alonso de Molina: 

machtli. sobrino, de varon.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 50v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

MACH-TLI nephew, or niece (from the point of view of an uncle) / sobrino, de varón (M) [(7)Bf.4V,5R,12R,12V]. S glosses this as specifically ‘nephew,’ but according to the Spanish-to-Nahuatl side of M, it applies equally to nephews and nieces.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 128.

Attestations from sources in English: 

ym machtli tlaua, auiua ycnotl, tlacnocaualli, tetloc tenauac nemini, tetlan nenenqui tetlan nenqui = A nephew (niece) has an uncle [or] an aunt. [He is] an orphan - parentless - who serves in another's house, a servant; one who lives with others. (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), 4.

oualla imach julia vixtopolcatl = came the niece of Julián Uixtopolcatl (Coyoacan, 1554)
Beyond the Codices, eds. Arthur J.O. Anderson, Frances Berdan, and James Lockhart (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), Doc. 10, 90–91.

yz cate ymachva teveltecac ometi = Here are Tehueltecac's two nieces/nephews. (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), 160–161.

Ōtinēchmocnēlli nomăchtze = Thank you, my nephew. (Central Mexico, 1570–80)
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), 197.