Likely adapted from an Indigenous Mexican moon name through Spanish usage, commonly understood as 'moon.'
Metzli (also spelled Metztli) is a Nahuatl name meaning simply and beautifully "moon." In the cosmology of the Mexica (Aztec) people, Metztli was a deity associated with the night, the lunar cycle, and the rhythms that governed agriculture, fertility, and the Aztec calendar. The moon held profound spiritual significance in Mesoamerican thought: it marked time, governed the sacred 260-day ritual calendar (the tonalpohualli), and was intimately connected to water, the tides of life, and the cycles of women.
In some traditions Metztli was associated with Tecuciztecatl, the vain god who became the moon in the Aztec creation myth after hesitating to throw himself into the primordial fire. Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, remains a living language spoken by over one and a half million people in Mexico today, primarily in Puebla, Veracruz, Hidalgo, and the Basin of Mexico. The revival of Nahuatl names in contemporary Mexican and Mexican-American communities is both a linguistic preservation effort and an act of cultural reclamation — a rejection of the colonial suppression of indigenous identity in favor of deep pre-Columbian roots.
Metzli appears today as a given name across Mexico and in Latinx communities in the United States. The name's appeal is immediate and universal: the moon is humanity's shared celestial companion, present in every culture's mythology. Metzli offers that universal meaning in a form that is specifically, beautifully indigenous — a reminder that the oldest names carry the oldest truths.