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.

cuachichil.

Headword: 
cuachichil.
Principal English Translation: 

House Finch, a bird (see Hunn, attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
quachichil, cuachichiltic, quachichiltic
Alonso de Molina: 

quachichil. pardal, o gorrion.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 84r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Attestations from sources in English: 

CUA-CHICHIL/CUA-CHICHILTIC/NŌCH-TŌTŌ-TL, House Finch, male [FC: 48 Quachichil] “It is the same as the molotl, but because it is chili-red-headed it is named quachichil.” This is the male House Finch. See also NŌCH-TŌTŌ-TL. Compare CUĀ-CHICHIQUIL-LI “feather crest” [Molina in Karttunen].
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); Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (University of Oklahoma, Norman, 1983); 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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

See a painting of this bird on line in the Digital Florentine Codex:
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 51v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/51v/images/9d1691cf-a... Accessed 18 October 2025.

themes: 
Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.
Colors
Feathers
See also: 
molotl.