ayotl. | Nahuatl Dictionary

Headword:

ayotl.

Principal English Translation:

a freshwater turtle (see Molina); also, a person's name (attested as male); sometimes the glyph for ayotl is really intended for yaotl (combatant, enemy)

Orthographic Variants:

ayutl

IPAspelling:

ɑːyoːtɬ

Alonso de Molina:

ayotl. tortuga.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 3v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

ayutl. tortuga, o zumo de yeruas estrujadas.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 4r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

ĀYŌ-TL pl: -MEH turtle, tortoise / tortuga /K016/ (M) [(1)Tp.172,(3)Xp.29]. X does not mark the initial vowel long. See Ā-TL.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 17.

Attestations from sources in English:

See an image of the fresh water turtle in the Digital Florentine Codex.
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 63v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/63v/images/0 Accessed 25 October 2025.

See an image that represents ayotl in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

anto ayotl = Antonio Ayotl (Tepetlaoztoc, sixteenth century)
Barbara J. Williams and H. R. Harvey, The Códice de Santa María Asunción: Facsimile and Commentary: Households and Lands in Sixteenth-Century Tepetlaoztoc (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997), 83, 117, 144.

IDIEZ morfema:

āyōtl.

IDIEZ traduc. inglés:

turtle.

IDIEZ def. náhuatl:

Ce piltecuanitzin iixnezca tenextic zo cafentic; quipiya ipancacallo chicahuac; itzontecon zan pilcuahuehueyacatzin; huan itztoc pan atl. “Ne ayotl nicamati pampa nelpilcuecuetzin. ”

IDIEZ def. español:

# Tlat. Un animal que vive en el agua que tiene encima de el un caparazón duro. “Ofelia tenía una tortuga en su casa y después se murió porque no le daba de comer”.

IDIEZ gramática:

tlat.