nauhcan.

Headword: 
nauhcan.
Principal English Translation: 

in four places or in four parts (see Molina and Karttunen)

Orthographic Variants: 
nāuhcān
IPAspelling: 
nɑːwkɑːn
Alonso de Molina: 

nauhcan. en quatro partes, o lugares.
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 063v. col. 2. v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.

Frances Karttunen: 

NĀUHCĀN in four places or parts / en cuatro partes o lugares (M) [(3)Cf.91r]. See NĀHU(I), -CĀN.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 160.

Attestations from sources in English: 

"One will see reference in the translation to the four parts of Mexico Tenochtitlan, in the Nahuatl usually simply nauhcan, literally 'in four places.' Tenochtitlan was a complex altepetl consisting of four separate sub-altepetl, each large and complex in itself. The units are of the type that Chimalpahin calls tlayacatl altepetl in referring to his native Amaquemecan, but he never uses that word for the four parts of Tenochtitlan; indeed he gives them no specific appellation at all."
Annals of His Time: Don Domingo de San Antón Muñón Chimalpahin Quauhtlehuanitzin, James Lockhart, Susan Schroeder, and Doris Namala, eds. and transl. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 19.

A ca namechnotza, ca namechtzatzilia in nauhcac antemj, in anxoxouhque in antlamacazque, in antepeioque, in amoztoioque = I call out, I cry out to ye who occupy the four quarters, ye who are the Xoxouhque, ye who are the Tlamacazque, ye who are lords of mountains, ye who are lords of the caves (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), 40.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

mochintin p[adr]esme ynic nauhcan moyetzticate mochintin motecpa[n]tzinotiaque = todos los padres que residen en las cuatro partes, todos fueron en procesión (ca. 1582, Mexico City)
Luis Reyes García, ¿Como te confundes? ¿Acaso no somos conquistados? Anales de Juan Bautista (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, Biblioteca Lorenzo Boturini Insigne y Nacional Basílica de Guadalupe, 2001), 178–179.

themes: 
Numbers, Math