In another class of proper names, in their own tongue, although they had a meaning in the Nahuatl, the scribe preferred to express them by ikonomatic instead of ikonographic devices. Thus, _Mapachtepec_, means literally, “badger hill,” or “badger town,” but in place of depicting a badger, the native writer made a drawing of a hand grasping a bunch of Spanish moss, the _Tillandsia usneoides_. The hand or arm in Nahuatl is _maitl_, the moss _pachtli_; and taking the first syllables of these two words we obtain _ma pach_: the word _tepec_, locative form of _tepetl_, hill or village, is expressed by the usual conventional ideographic or determinative sign.
In other names, the relative _positions_ of the objects are significant, reminding us of the rebus of a well-known town in Massachusetts, celebrated for its educational institutions:
which is to be read, “Andover, Massachusetts;” so in the Aztec scrolls, we have _itzmiquilpan_ represented by an obsidian knife, _itztli_, and an edible plant, _quilitl_, which are placed above or over (_pan_), the sign for cultivated land, _milli_, thus giving all the elements of the name, the last syllable by position only.
In one respect I believe the ikonomatic writing of the Mexicans is peculiar; that is, in the phonetic value which it assigns to _colors_. Like the Egyptian, it is polychromatic, but, so far as I know, the Egyptian polychromes never had a phonetic value; they were, in a general way, used by that people as determinatives, from some supposed similarity of hue; thus green indicates a vegetable substance or bronze, yellow, certain woods and some animals, and so on. In heraldry the colors are very important and have well-defined significations, but very seldom, if ever, phonetic ones. Quite the contrary is the case with the Mexican script. It presents abundant instances where the color of the object as portrayed is an integral phonetic element of the sound designed to be conveyed.
To quote examples, the Nahuatl word for yellow is _cuztic_ or _coztic_, and when the hieroglyphics express phonetically such proper names as _Acozpa_, _Cozamaloapan_, _Cozhuipilcan_, etc., the monosyllable _coz_ is expressed solely by the yellow color which the scribe lays upon his picture. Again, the name _Xiuhuacan_, “the place of grass,” is represented by a circle colored pale blue, _xiuhtic_. The name of this tint supplies the phonetic desired. The name of the village _Tlapan_ is conveyed by a circle, whose interior is painted red, _tlapalli_, containing the mark of a human foot-print. Such examples are sufficient to prove that in undertaking to decipher the Mexican writing we must regard the color as well as the figure, and be prepared to allow to each a definite phonetic value.