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.

tiacauh.

Headword: 
tiacauh.
Principal English Translation: 

one valiant in war, warrior

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), 235.

IPAspelling: 
tiɑhkɑːw
Alonso de Molina: 

tiacauh. valiente hombre, animoso y esforzado soldado.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 112v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

TIAHCĀUH someone brave, valiant / valiente hombre, animoso y esforzado soldado (M) [(1)Bf.8r,(3)Cf.109v,120r]. This contrasts with TIĀCHCĀUH 'older brother,' although they are probably cognates.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 240.

Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written: 

pl. tiahcāhuān. originally tēāhcāuh, possibly related to tēāchcāuh. 235

Attestations from sources in English: 

in tiacauh, aixco eoaliztli, atlauitequiztli, apeoaltiliztli, tlapaltic, chicactic chicaoac = [In] the valiant man [are] invincibility, robustness, unconquerability. (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), 23.

ca huehueyntin yaotiacahuan catca quetzalpatzactli = great, brave warriors. The quetzal feather crest device was their insignia; they bore it upon their backs in battle. (central Mexico, early seventeenth century)
Codex Chimalpahin: Society and Politics in Mexico Tenochtitlan, Tlatelolco, Culhuacan, and Other Nahuatl Altepetl in Central Mexico; The Nahuatl and Spanish Annals and Accounts Collected and Recorded by don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Susan Schroeder (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), vol. 1, 144–145.