Evidence dossier: Xōlōtl

Evidence dossier 281 — Xōlōtl. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.

At a Glance

• Canonical form: Xōlōtl
• Original script: —
• Pantheon: Nahuatl
• Convention: the tradition’s own scholarly transliteration standard
• False forms on record: 2
• Contested forms: none attested
• Series: The Canonical Register, No. 281 of 287

The Evidence

Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The tradition's record preserves this name in its romanized scholarly form: Xōlōtl — no older script survives to transcribe, so the canonical content is the exactness of the spelling itself.

Exhibit 2 — the preserved marks. o → ō (Long vowel); o → ō (Long vowel). Each is verifiable against the sources named in the attestation.

Exhibit 3 — the flattened form. The plain form xolotl is not false — it is a fallback, and the register is exact about what that means. In systems that cannot carry diacritics (legacy databases, older tooling, parts of the address-bar pipeline) the flattened form is the accepted vehicle, and the rulebook names it explicitly as the final rung of the fallback hierarchy: full restoration first, circumflex where attested, macron-only by the academic standard, an attested variant, and only then plain ASCII.

What the fallback status forbids is promotion: xolotl may carry the name where marks are impossible, but it may not represent the name where marks are possible. Every mark it drops — o → ō, o → ō — is a fact the sources recorded. A fallback is a vehicle, never the primary.

Exhibit 4 — struck from the record: Xolotl. Origin: the publisher compromise — older books and hurried websites that print the "English equivalent" as if it were the name itself. Grounds: every substitution here (ō→o) is a romanization of convenience, not an attested spelling — it teaches the reader to guess, not to read.

Exhibit 5 — struck from the record: Xôlôtl. Origin: the near-miss — a form that looks right at a glance and circulates on wikis and forums. Grounds: a macron (length) is not a circumflex (quality/tone) — they answer different questions.

Exhibit 6 — the physical record. Colima's ceramic dogs — plump, tumored, dancing, two thousand years old — are the west-Mexican ancestors of his cult, buried in shaft tombs to guide their masters. Aztec dog-effigy vessels and the Florentine Codex's account of the funeral dog detail the central-Mexican rite. Xochimilco's chinampa system — the floating gardens where the last wild axolotls hold on — is a UNESCO World Heritage site, the god's water-form's last stronghold, guarded by canals older than the Aztec state.

Exhibit 7 — the continuing record. The axolotl — Ambystoma mexicanum, the salamander that never grows up, regenerating limbs and heart — took his name into every biology classroom on earth; its survival in Xochimilco's canals is now a national project. The xoloitzcuintli dog is Mexico's national breed, and Dante's Divine Comedy has, in the Mexican imagination, a local answer: the Xolo that carries you across.

The Convention's Own History

Every tradition in this register has its own scholarly transliteration standard, built by its own specialists over decades or centuries, and the register follows each on its own terms: the tradition’s own standard. The principle that unifies them is the one the whole project stands on: a name is evidence, and evidence is not negotiable — not for keyboards, not for convenience, not for anyone.

The Protocol's Position

Can the canonical form live in the address bar? Almost always, yes. IDNA 2008 admits every mark this register defends — the DNS stores them as `xn--` punycode and modern browsers render them natively. The real frictions are practical, not legal: some registrars stock only part of the IDN space, so a theoretically valid name can be temporarily unbuyable; and stacked combinations (an acute riding a macron) remain awkward to type on mobile keyboards even where the protocol accepts them.

The project's answer is a ranked ladder, not a compromise: the full restoration first, then attested fallbacks in descending order of completeness. The ladder's lowest rung, plain ASCII, is a vehicle for legacy systems — sanctioned, but never presented as the scholarly form.

The Verdict

Case closed on Xōlōtl: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form xolotl rides as the sanctioned fallback — and stays in that lane. The register's files remain open: if a source surfaces that changes any line of this entry, the entry changes. Until then, the temple at /sites/xolotl/ holds the canonical form.

The docket for this ruling: 2 false forms ruled against, Xolotl first on the docket; 2 preserved marks verified: o → ō, o → ō; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 6 cited sources — Florentine Codex, Sahagún, Karttunen.

The Register Continues

This is one of 287 entries in the Canonical Register — the authoritative reference for every flagship temple. The temple's founding dispatch tells the name's story; its Restoration File details the marks; its Resonance File reads the archetype into the industries. The blog index holds the whole archive, and the Rulebook states the convention this register enforces.

Continue the register — previous entry: Xīwángmǔ (read it) · next entry: Yām (read it).

The Canonical Register is written from the same canonical record as the lexicon itself. If a false form is missing from this page, it is because the evidence does not support calling it false — or because we have not seen it yet. Show us, with a citation, and the register will answer.