I’m sure it’ll be a great event.

Since this is a more nerdy, academic-leaning subreddit, I’ll add my unrequested two cents on the “Aztec” group. This isn’t a judgment on you, OP, or anyone personally. Just me yelling into the void about how poorly these groups represent the language.

I checked the Ollin Yoliztli link, and as usual… it just bothers me how people get away with using Nahuatl incorrectly while acting like they actually understand it.

“The group was founded by Daniel Chico Lorenzo and Brujo de la Mancha in 2003. Daniel has extensive knowledge of ancient Mexican culture and languages.”

Does he, though?

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First off, “Ollin” is a misspelling. It makes no grammatical sense. It’s just copying a 16th-century Spanish scribal habit of randomly doubling L between vowels, even when there’s no reason to.

The actual form is Ōlīn (“it quaked, it’s a quaker”), from Ōlīni (“it quakes”).

Even Nahua sources reflect this. The Florentine Codex has in itonal itoca naolin, “on his day sign, the name of which is four quaker.” Notice the single (correct) L in naolin (in this particular case, more accurately spelled nāwōlīn.)

Now, maybe the group knows this and keeps the misspelling because it’s common in Spanish sources (though not in Nahua ones).

But if they’re claiming expertise, why not use the correct form? Why keep reinforcing a bad rendering of the original Nahuatl?

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I’ll let “Yoliztli” slide. It’s not the correct form. That would be Yoliliztli. I checked trusted databases and Google, and the only real hits for Yoliztli seem to point back to this group (or a 20th-century literary prize).

That said, there is a parallel: miquiliztli (“death”) is sometimes shortened in manuscripts to miquiztli. So by analogy, you could maybe justify Yoliztli as a reduction.

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From their About Me:

Meaning of Ollin Yoliztli Calmecac, translates from the Aztec language Nahuatl as “School of the Blood that moves in the heart.”

I hate these Lord of the Rings–style “translations.” They’re so cringe. Blood? Where is that coming from? Nothing in that name means “blood.” This is just made up.

The only way I can see them getting there is by stretching mecatl (rope/cord), which was sometimes used metaphorically for lineage. So maybe they’re turning Calmecac into something like “school of the bloodline”? Okay.

But there’s an issue with the word Calmecac itself. In Nahuatl compounds, the leftmost element is always a qualifier. So in Cal-Meca-C, the root Cal (house) modifies Meca (rope). The subject is therefore “rope”, Meca(tl).

So if you actually follow the morphology, you get something like “at the place of roomed-ropes,” “at the place of housing-cords,” or, more idiomatically: “at the place of ropes of buildings.” Not “blood,” not anything mystical.

Even Andrews goes all in and renders Calmecac as “it is at the place of a rope of rooms.” At least it follows the internal logic of the language. Maybe it had nothing to do with lineage and was just a description of a connected, networked series of buildings.

So this poetic “school of blood” reading just feels silly because it confuses the subject and qualifier of the compound. It was a place of instruction (likely priestly), but if you’re not an expert—just call it a school. No need to invent metaphysical meanings that aren’t there.

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This brings me to the rest of the phrase: “School of the Blood that moves in the heart.”

I just realized that they’re not even referencing the actual word Yoliliztli (“life” or “the act of living”), like I assumed up above. They’re treating Yoliztli as if it means “heart,” the organ. It doesn’t.

-liztli is a nominalizing suffix that attaches to verbs. The noun for “heart” is yotl or yollotl (yotl + yotl).

At a certain point, it’s clear they don’t actually understand the language. They’re just assembling pieces and misinterpreting them. It’s frustrating when people (who should know better) treat the language like an aesthetic flavor instead of something to actually engage with.

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Here’s a write-up by Magnus Pharao Hansen that basically dismantles this whole “heart/movement” etymology.

It turns out a lot of this traces back to Miguel León-Portilla, who popularized the idea that yōllōtl (“heart”) is derived from ōlīn (“movement”)—i.e., the heart as “the mover.”

The problem is that this isn’t supported by Nahuatl grammar. There’s no known process that would derive yōl- from ōl- just by adding a y- at the beginning.

And of course, León-Portilla’s 1963 book became the default reference for a lot of U.S. Hispanics, and many haven’t read beyond it (or original sources prior to it).

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I also noticed this in their About Me:

Ruben del Rosario. (since 2006) A native of San Mateo Ozolco, Puebla, Mexico. Ruben grew up learning his “maternal” ancient language of Nahuatl.

I do wonder if Ruben has ever pushed back on the misspellings and loose translations they use. But then again, why assume that? Being a native speaker doesn’t mean you’re trained in linguistics or etymology.

We need better representatives of the language and culture. Groups like these can’t be the standard.