Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

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

tepiltzin.

Headword: 
tepiltzin.
Principal English Translation: 

somebody's child, whether a son or a daughter (see Molina); offspring, someone well born (see Karttunen); a noble (see Sahagún)

IPAspelling: 
teːpiltsin
Alonso de Molina: 

tepiltzin. hijo, o hija de alguno.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 103r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TĒPILTZIN offspring, someone wellborn / hijo o hija de alguno (M), bien nacido (C) [(2)Cf.99r,128r]. This is -PIL 'offspring' prefixed with the prefix TĒ-, which imparts a generic sense 'offspring of someone,' and the honorific element -TZIN. C contrasts this with TEPILTZIN, the honorific form of TEPIL-LI 'vulva.' See -PIL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 230.

Attestations from sources in English: 

in tepiltzin, nane, tate taoa, tequixti, cemoquichtli centeconetl, teach, teiccauh, iacapantli, tlacoeoa, xocoiutl ueltioa, iccaue, cule, cioa, tlaçotli, tlaçotlaloni, neneconi, tlatlaçotlaloni, teiolloimecaio, aixcaoaloni, axiccaoaloni, tlaxexeluiloni. = The noble has a mother , a father. He resembles his parents. [He is] an only man, an only child, an older brother, a younger brother, a first born, a second child, [or] a youngest sister; he has a grandfather, a grandmother. [He is] esteemed, lovable, good of lineage; not to be neglected, not to be ignored. [He is] one to share things with. (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), 19.

tepil = the son, the child
tepilhuan (plural) = the children, the next generation, those who will inherit the town; the nobles; the population
James Lockhart, personal communication, May 23, 2008.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

canel yte[c]h quitazque yn tepilhuan yn canin mani yn altepetlalli = en él los hijos verán de verdad dónde están situadas las tierras del pueblo
Anneliese Monnich, "El Altepeamatl de Ocoyacac, México," Indiana 2 (1974), 171.

themes: 
Children, Childhood, Adolescence
Family, Kinship, Descent