Principal English Translation:
rulers, lords, caciques, or nobles (see Molina); far more common in early Nahuatl is the spelling tlatoque
Orthographic Variants:
tlahtoqueh, tlatoqueh, tlatohque, tlahtohqueh
Alonso de Molina:
tlatoque. señores, caciques, o principales.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 142r. col. 1. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Horacio Carochi / English:
tlàtòque = principales, señores, y caciques. Pero para decir, y denotar que son de varios pueblos, y muchos se dize tlātlàtòquè
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 36.
Attestations from sources in English:
This is the plural of tlahtoani. When speaking of a group of such lords from a number of pueblos, the first tla- is reduplicated. (see Carochi)
Attestations from sources in Spanish:
muchintin dadoque = mochintin tlatoque = señores todos
(Guatemala, 1637, documento en pipil)
Miguel León-Portilla, "Un Texto en Nahua Pipil de Guatemala, Siglo XVII," Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 13 (1978), 35–47, y ver 44–45.
tlatoque = "lords of the altepetl"; further explained in a footnote to probably refer to the members of the cabildo (indigenous town council)
Kevin Terraciano, Codex Sierra: A Nahuatl-Mixtec Book of Accounts from Colonial Mexico (2021), 141.