⚠ 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.

tlazopilli.

Headword: 
tlazopilli.
Principal English Translation: 

"precious nobleman," denoting a nobleman of particularly high rank and illustrious birth, but also used as a term of flattery for any nobleman (p. 154); "legitimate nobleman" (p. 16)
The Tlaxcalan Actas: A Compendium of the Records of the Cabildo of Tlaxcala (1545-1627), eds. James Lockhart, Frances Berdan, and Arthur J.O. Anderson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986), 154.

Orthographic Variants: 
tlaçopilli
IPAspelling: 
tɬɑsohpilli
Alonso de Molina: 

tlazopilli. hijo o hija legitimos.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 118v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TLAZOHPIL-LI someone of noble, legitimate birth / hijo o hija legitimos (M), un principal (C) [(1)Cf.117v]. See TLAZOH-TLI, PIL-LI.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 306.

Attestations from sources in English: 

Tlaçopilli, chalchiuitl, maquiztli teuxiuitl, quetzalli tlaçotli, tlaçotitlacatl, xocoiutl, malhuiloni, tlamaluilli, chonequiztli, hatzoio, hateuhio, uel quiztica tepiltzin. = [He is like] a precious green stone, a bracelet of fine turquoise, a precious father. [He is] an esteemed noble, a youngest child—one who deserves to be treated with tenderness, with care. [ He is] a sensitive person, not unclean, not besmirched; a fortunate noble. (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), 16.

plural = tlaçopipilitin

tlazopilli = precious prince (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Thelma Sullivan, "Tlatoania and tlatocayotl in the Sahagún manuscripts," Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl 14 (1980), 225–238. See esp. p. 227.