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.

Xelhuan.

Headword: 
Xelhuan.
Principal English Translation: 

a person's name (attested male); for example, one of the Nonoalca Chichmeca lords who is mentioned in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca
Dana Leibsohn, Script and Glyph: Pre-Hispanic History, Colonial Bookmaking and the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2009), 29.

Orthographic Variants: 
Xelhua
Attestations from sources in English: 

See an image that represents Xelhuan in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

A Xelhuan is mentioned in the census of Morelos. His wife was named Teicuh. (Cuernavaca region, ca. 1540s)
The Book of Tributes: Early Sixteenth-Century Nahuatl Censuses from Morelos, ed. and transl. S. L. Cline, (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1993), 170–171.

Xelhuan was the name of a Nonoalca Chichimeca who settled in Tula with three other Nonoalcas and four Tolteca Chichimecas, according to the Historia Tolteca Chichimeca or Anales de Cuauhtinchan. (central Mexico, sixteenth century)
Literaturas de Anahuac y del Incario / Literatures of Anahuac and the Inca, ed. Miguel León-Portilla (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editories, 2006), 192.

Attestations from sources in Spanish: 

yuan y nonoualca chichimeca yn xelhuan yn ueuetzin yn quauhtzin yn citlalmacuetzin = junto con los nonoualca chichimeca: Xelhuan, Ueuetzin, Quauhtzin, Citlalmacuetzin (Quauhtinchan, s. XVI)
Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, eds. Paul Kirchhoff, Lina Odena Güemes, y Luis Reyes García (México: CISINAH, INAH-SEP, 1976), 133.

auh yn iquac omiqui yn uemac niman ya yc yaui yn tollan yn nonouallca yn xelhuan yn ueuetzin yn icxicouatl yn quetzalteueyac = Y cuando murió Uemac luego ya se van a Tollan los nonoualca Xelhuan y Ueuetzin [y los tolteca] Icsicouatl y Quetzalteueyac. (Quauhtinchan, s. XVI)
Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, eds. Paul Kirchhoff, Lina Odena Güemes, y Luis Reyes García (México: CISINAH, INAH-SEP, 1976), 135.