Nahua Names

Rebecca Horn’s article on the naming practice of Nahuan children brought out many interesting facts, such as the “acceptance” of the catholic faith, social class, gender differences.  As a study of mostly baptismal records, Horn was able to indicate key factors that went in to the naming of nahuan children post-conquest.  Once again Spanish, mostly Christian culture dominated the realms of names, especially as time went on.  One must remember that the names present in this study are only of those Nahuans that subjected themselves to the Catholic faith through baptism.  Horn points out that for early baptisms, it would have been the baptizing priest or friars who would have named the child. I believe this to be very important due to many aspects.  First off, priest and friars are men, so when it came to  giving christian saint names, one would assume that the fathers would choose feminized male saints names over those of female saints.  This could be due to the devotions the friars had, or as Horn stated the lack of knowledge on the subject.

Naming of Nahuas was also affected by their social class and gender.  Horn states that female pre-conquest names tended to be more stereotypical while male names were more personal.  Horn points out that this, most-likly had something to do with act of marriage and the female joining the husbands kinship.  This lack of personalization of names followed into the post-cpnquest time period.  Horn also disscussed how ones class would determine their name or rather specail and sometimes Spanish surnames were gifted to the elite nahua.

Horn’s article shows how the spanish institutionalized something that would be considered something that would be personal:  one’s name.  Once again the Church had a hand in this cultural domination.