⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-17 - Repairs are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!

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.

Otomitl.

Headword: 
Otomitl.
Principal English Translation: 

an Otomi person; a member of the group of people who speak Otomi (a language unrelated to Nahuatl) (see Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants: 
hotomitl
IPAspelling: 
otomitɬ
Frances Karttunen: 

OTOMI-TL pl: -H a member of the group of people who speak Otomi (a language unrelated to Nahuatl) / de nación Otomí (C) [(2)Cf.4r].
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 180.

Attestations from sources in English: 

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

Otomitl (noun) = an Otomi; a military officer so called
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 160.

Auh intla yquachicyo intla yotõyo ypan otlama in ompa atlisco anoço uexotzinco oc cenca ic paquia in iyollo motecuiçoma. = And if, as a shorn one, or as an Otomí [warrior], he were to take a captive there at Atlixco or at Uexotzinco, much was Moctezuma's heart gladdened thereby (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 8 -- Kings and Lords, no. 14, Part IX, 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, 1951), 88.

amo moiectlalpilia, ic intech mjtoa. Can mach mjto, ac mach mjtztocaioti in totomitl ca nel noço totomijtl = It was not worn in good taste; thus of them was said: "Hath it possibly been said that someone called thee an Otomí? Is it true that thou art an Otomí?" (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), 178–179.

yn manel Otontzintli ynmanel chichimecatl yn amo yximachoni yn amo maviztililoni yn ça ça vel tlapaltzitzintin yn motoliniani = although it be a [simpleminded] little Otomí or a [wild savage] Chichimec who is unknown and dishonorable, who are just really ordinary fellows, the poor (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Fray Alonso de Molina, Nahua Confraternities in Early Colonial Mexico: The 1552 Nahuatl Ordinances of fray Alonso de Molina, OFM, ed. and trans., Barry D. Sell (Berkeley: Academy of American Franciscan History, 2002), 134–135.

in telpuchotomitl = the youth of Otomi rank (central Mexico, sixteenth-century)
James Lockhart, We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico, Repertorium Columbianum v. 1 (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1993), 226.

notomitl = I am an Otomi; totomî = we are Otomi
Michel Launey, An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, translated and adapted by Christopher MacKay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 18.

Otomí = a label given to brave but supposedly wicked warriors who were furious in battle, who "only came paying the tribute of death" (central Mexico, sixteenth-century)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 6 -- Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, No. 14, Part 7, 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), 110.

otonnexineque = they have Otomi-style haircuts (suggesting a possible alternate translation of a passage from the Cantares Mexicanos, Bierhorst, 248–49, verse 18)
James Lockhart, Nahuas and Spaniards: Postconquest Central Mexican History and Philology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 147.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

nican Tlaxcallan piloloque hotomime. = aquí en Tlaxcala fueron colgados unos otomíes. (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), 164–165.

Othomime ohualaque Tlaxcallan tlalpan = Vinieron los otomíes a la tierra de Tlaxcala. (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), 118–119.