miahuatototl.

Headword: 
miahuatototl.
Principal English Translation: 

Lesser Goldfinch, a bird (see Hunn, attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
miauatototl, miyahuatototl, miaoatototl
Alonso de Molina: 

miauatototl. paxarico amarillo que canta suauemente.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 55v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

MIYAHUA-TŌTŌ-TL, literally, “maize tassel bird”/XOPAN-TŌTŌ-TL, literally, “summer bird,” Lesser Goldfinch (Spinus psaltria) [FC: 52 Miaoatototl]: “ Also its name is xopan tototl. It is small, round, dark yellow. It has a song; it is a singer It gladdens one; it makes one rejoice. It is small, tiny, minute.” I believe this most likely refers to the Lesser Goldfinch. The description fits and this equivalence is reminiscent of how the Lesser Goldfinch is named in the Zapotec language in San Juan Mixtepec of the Sierra de Miahuatlán, Oaxaca (Hunn 2008).
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); Eugene S. Hunn. A Zapotec Natural History (University of Arizona Press, Tucson (2008); and, 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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

miahuatototl (noun) = a bird
Daniel Garrison Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry: Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems (1877), 157.

See also: