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.

mayanaliztli.

Headword: 
mayanaliztli.
Principal English Translation: 

hunger, famine (see Molina and Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants: 
mayanalistli
Alonso de Molina: 

mayanaliztli. hambre general.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 51r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.cemacicatzacutimani yn cemanauacyn mayanaliztli. estar cercado dehambre el mundo.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 15v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

MAYĀNALIZ-TLI hunger, famine / hambre general (M) [(2)Zp. 66, 166]. See MAYĀN(A)
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 141.

Attestations from sources in English: 

cemacicatzacutimani yn cemanahuac yn mayanaliztli = to be surrounded by hunger in the world (see Molina)

peuhqui cocolistli ypan mayanalistli = An epidemic began in the time of famine
Here in This Year: Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Valley, ed. and transl. Camilla Townsend, with an essay by James Lockhart (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 168–169.

"1661...çano ipan xihuitl yn omochiuh chicahuac mayanaliztli (p. 823)" = "1661...Also in this year a strong famine occurred." (Anales de Puebla y Tlaxcala, no. 2, 1524–1674)
Frances Krug, "The Nahuatl Annals of the Tlaxcala-Puebla Region," ch. 3, p. 111, Ph.D. Dissertation draft written in the 1980s, with transcriptions and translations approved by James Lockhart. Cited here by SW.

Toyomotlan, tonacaztitech mopipiloa in totecuyo. Inin tlatolli, itechpa mitoaya: in iquac itla topan quimuchiuilia totecuyo: azo cetl quiqua in tonacayotl, azo mayanaliztli. = Our Lord is pinching our ribs and pulling our ears. This was said when our Lord caused some such thing to befall us as a frost which ravaged the crops, or a famine.
Thelma D. Sullivan, "Nahuatl Proverbs, Conundrums, and Metaphors, Collected by Sahagún," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 4 (1963), 172–173.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

huel huey mayanaliztli = una gran hambre (Tlaxcala, 1662–1692)
Juan Buenaventura Zapata y Mendoza, Historia cronológica de la Noble Ciudad de Tlaxcala, transcripción paleográfica, traducción, presentación y notas por Luis Reyes García y Andrea Martínez Baracs (Tlaxcala and México: Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, Secretaría de Extensión Universitaria y Difusión Cultural, y Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, 1995), 94–95.

themes: 
Death
Health, Sickness, Wellness, Medicine