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atapalcatl.

Headword: 
atapalcatl.
Principal English Translation: 

Ruddy Duck, a bird (see Hunn, attestations); a small duck (see Molina)

IPAspelling: 
ɑtɑpɑlkɑtɬ
Alonso de Molina: 

atapalcatl. anade, o pato pequeño.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 7v. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

Ā-TAPALCA-TL, literally, “pottery of the water,” Ruddy Duck (Oxyura jamaicensis) [FC: 36 Atapalcatl] “Also [it is called] yacatexotli. It is a duck…. It is named atapacatl because if it is to rain on the next day, in the evening it begins, and all night [continues], to beat the water [with its wings]. It is named yacatexotli because its bill is light blue…. Its head is tawny; its wings, breast, back, tail are all tawny; only its belly is white…. It rears its young here; [it has] ten, fifteen, twenty young….” A fine description of the male Ruddy Duck. Martin del Campo and I agree.
Fr. Bernardino ]de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 11 – Earthly Things, no. 14, Part XII, 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, 1963); Rafael Martín del Campo, “Ensayo de interpretación del Libro Undecimo de la Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún – 11 Las Aves (1),” Anales del Instituto de Biología Tomo XI, Núm. 1 (México, D.F., 1940); and, with quotation selections, synthesis, and analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

The Florentine Codex includes a painting of this bird in Book 11, folios 36v. and 61r.
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 36v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/36v/images/0 Accessed 17 October 2025 and
https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/61r/images/0 Accessed 25 October 2025.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

atapalcatl = pato tepalcate
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 36v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/36v/images/0 Accessed 17 October 2025.

themes: 
Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.