centzontlatole.

Headword:

centzontlatole.

Principal English Translation:

Northern Mockingbird (see Hunn, attestations)

Orthographic Variants:

centzontlatolle, centzuntlatolle, centzontlatolli, zentzontlahtoleh, centzontli tlahtolli, centzontli tlatolli

Alonso de Molina:

centzuntlatolle. paxaro que canta mucho.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 18r. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen:

CENTZONTLAHTŌLEH brown-backed solitaire; mockingbird /pájaro que canta mucho (M), ave celebrada por su admirable canto (R) [(2)Rp.71].R has both the full form and the shortened form CENTZONTLEH. See CENTZON-TLI, TLAHTŌL-LI.

CENTZONTLEH See CENTZONTLAHTŌLEH.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 32.

Attestations from sources in English:

ZENTZON-TLAHTŌLEH, Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) [FC: 52 Çentzontlatole]: “It is ashen, a little dusky. The breast is white, the wings white mingled with red. There is a [white] bar over the eyes. [The body] is small and long. Its dwelling place, where it breeds, is in the forest, in inaccessible places. It does not sing in the winter, only during the summer. It is named centzontlatole because it mocks all the birds; it also mocks the turkeys… the dogs… it sings all night.” This bird has been identified with either the Northern Mockingbird or the Brown-backed Solitaire (Myadestes occidentalis), both birds well known for their songs. However, the descriptive details fit the mockingbird best. It might have applied to either. This might also be pronounced CENTZON-TLAHTŌLEH.
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); 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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

centzontōtōtl = mockingbird
Nelson Yolohmazatl, Nahuatlahtolli, 1 June 2013.

For a painting of this bird, see the Digital Florentine Codex.
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 55v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/55v/images/0 Accessed 20 October 2025.

Attestations from sources in Spanish:

centzontōtōtl = cenzontle, ruiseñor;
nehhuātl nictlazohtla in centzontōtōtl īcuīc = yo amo el canto del centzontle
Nelson Yolohmazatl, Nahuatlahtolli, 1 Junio 2013. Náhuatl moderno.

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