[Footnote 2: Veitia, _Historia_, cap. XVII.]

His connection with the worship of the reproductive principle seems to be
further indicated by his surname, _Ce acatl_. This means One Reed, and is
the name of a day in the calendar. But in the Nahuatl language, the word
_acatl_, reed, cornstalk, is also applied to the virile member; and it has
been suggested that this is the real signification of the word when
applied to the hero-god. The suggestion is plausible, but the word does
not seem to have been so construed by the early writers. If such an
understanding had been current, it could scarcely have escaped the
inquiries of such a close student and thorough master of the Nahuatl
tongue as Father Sahagun.

On the other hand, it must be said, in corroboration of this
identification, that the same idea appears to be conveyed by the symbol of
the serpent. One correct translation of the name Quetzalcoatl is "the
beautiful serpent;" his temple in the city of Mexico, according to
Torquemada, had a door in the form of a serpent's mouth; and in the _Codex
Vaticanus_, No. 3738, published by Lord Kingsborough, of which we have an
explanation by competent native authority, he is represented as a serpent;
while in the same Codex, in the astrological signs which were supposed to
control the different parts of the human body, the serpent is pictured as
the sign of the male member.[1] This indicates the probability that in his
function as god of reproduction Quetzalcoatl may have stood in some
relation to phallic rites.

[Footnote 1: Compare the _Codex Vaticanus_, No. 3738, plates 44 and 75,
Kingsborough, _Mexican Antiquities_, vol. ii.]