November 2004 - Laurel LoAR - Ealdormere Submissions

Acceptances

EALDORMERE

Ælric de Blacktorn. Name.
Submitted as Aelric Blackthorn, the submitter requested authenticity for 12th C England and accepted all changes. The name Aelric is a misrepresentation of the Old English Ælric; Ae is not a valid spelling for Æ; when such names are translated to Middle English, the Æ typically appears as either A, Ai, or E. The submitter’s documentation shows Ælric as the closest 12th C form of the given name. It also shows de Blaketorn from 1190. Therefore, we have changed the name to Ælric de Blaketorn to make the given name registerable and to comply with the submitter’s request for authenticity.

Alana Greywood. Name.

Andrew Cameron. Name.

Aveline Karnatz. Device. Argent, a sea-urchin within an orle purpure.

Conrad Wappenschmied. Device. Per chevron azure and gules, a chevron Or between three armorer’s anvils reversed and a castle argent.

Diogenia Melanesi. Device (see RETURNS for badge). Or, a bull passant gules, on a chief embattled purpure an open book Or.

Edouard Beausoleil. Device change. Or, a cross moline sable.
His previous device, Per pale gules and vert, a griffin segreant argent within a bordure argent semy of suns gules is retained as a badge.

John Lindsay. Device. Per bend argent and azure, a winged cat salient and a decrescent counterchanged.

Tamsin Kitto. Name and device. Or, a pegasus rampant sable within a bordure pean.
The submitter requested authenticity for 16th C Cornwall. This is a lovely 16th C Cornish name!
The device does not conflict with the badge of Rinaldo of Blackhaven, registered in February of 1987 (via the Middle), Or, a pegasus salient sable ridden by a man in armour guardant vert, maintaining a sword sable. There’s one CD for adding thebordure, and the addition of the rider is enough for the second CD.

Returns

EALDORMERE

Aelfwyn the Irresponsible. Name change from Sapphira of Sherwood.
Irresponsible is too implausible to register as a byname. In the return of Aurelius the Arronious of Bikeleswade, Laurel said: Period nicknames tend to be straightforward and to use common words: Thynnewyt ‘thin [of] wit, stupid’, le Wis ‘the wise’, Badinteheved ‘bad in the head’, le Wilfulle, le Proude ‘the proud’, le Hardy ‘the courageous’, le Sour, le Cursede, le Deuyle ‘the devil’, Blaksoule ‘black-soul’. The learned erroneous simply doesn’t belong in this company. Although the adjective in question is not a past participle, we do not consider this case to be significantly different from those of Adam the Unexpected (East, returned 2/96) and Deirdre the Distracted (Ansteorra, returned 4/94), whose bynames were returned partly for being too abstract. Similarly, erroneous is too far from the common tongue to be at all believable as a period byname." [Jaelle of Armida, LoAR October 1996]
Irresponsible is first found in 1648 in a prose defense of the execution of Charles I. The word is not used as a descriptive human trait, but rather as a description of an action.
The submitter attempted to justify the byname as a Norse byname under lingua anglica. However the Lingua Anglica allowance requires that the byname be a translation of an attested byname in the original language. The cover letter that accompanied the January 1993 LoAR included a clarification of the Lingua Anglica allowance, including: Less codified, but of long practice, has been the translation of epithets into our lingua franca. Again, this follows a common historian’s usage: Harald I of Norway, for instance, is far better known as Harald Fairhair than by the untranslated Harald Haarfagr. Eric the Red, Philip the Good, Charles the Fat, all are translations of the period names, not the period names themselves. SCA names are permitted a similar translation: a simple epithet, documented as a period form, may be translated into English. (We prefer to register the untranslated form, but I concede that such rigor doesn’t always serve our clients’ best interests.) [Cover Letter for LoAR January 1993] As no documentation of a Norse byname meaning ’the Irresponsible’ was presented, the Lingua Anglica allowance does not apply here.
Finally, Aelfwyn is not a reasonable variant of the Old English name Ælfwyn. There is no evidence that the character Æ was interchangable with AE in either Old English or Middle English. If the submitter is interested in an Old English version of the submitted name, we suggest Ælfwyn unwis. Reaney and Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames, s.n. Unready, cite John Unwyse to 1317, and the OED dates the spelling unwis to 825.

Diogenia Melanesi. Badge. Gules, a simurgh close within a bordure Or.
The device conflicts with Süleyman Khayám: Gules, a peacock statant close Or, eyed gules, collared and tethered argent in sinister chief to a mullet within the horns of an increscent Or. There is one CD for adding the bordure. There is no CD for type of primary charge: The simurgh is not visually distinct enough from a peacock to be worth difference. Since the simurgh is not a charge found in period heraldry, difference is determined on visual grounds only under RfS X.4.e. [May 2002, Ret-Outlands, Tavia of Persia] The "leashed" charges are effectively maintained and not worth difference, leaving this only one CD away.

Ealdormere, Kingdom of. Badge for Order of the Crucible. Gules, a mullet of seven points voided and interlaced within a bordure Or.
The badge conflicts with Isabella de Medici: Sable, a mullet of 8 interlocking mascles, a bordure Or. There is one CD for the field. There is no CD for type of charge. The difference between seven and eight points is not significant for mullets. Moreover, both charges are really mullets voided and interlaced, just with different styles of interlacing. The fact that this badge’s interlacing has interior corners in it (rather than going straight from vertex to vertex) only serves to highlight the similarity. This also conflicts with Abaigeal Fairchild, Per chevron vert and gules, a mullet of eight points voided within a bordure Or, and with Regula Alicia la Placida, Quarterly vert and gules, a mullet of eight points voided, a bordure Or. (The latter is reblazoned elsewhere on this LoAR.) In each case there is only one CD for the field.

Laurel Letter of Pends and Discussion (LoPaD):

To all the College of Arms and all others who may read this missive, from François Laurel King of Arms, Evan Wreath, and Margaret Pelican, greetings.

This letter contains the issues raised in the November 2004 LoAR for CoA discussion. The text in this letter is copied verbatim from that LoAR; it is provided here for convenience. As with a February LoI, these matters are currently scheduled for the Laurel meetings in June 2005. Original commentary must be in the College’s hands no later than April 31 2005. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College’s hands no later than May 30 2004.

1. Ealdormere, Kingdom of. Badge. (Fieldless) A wolf passant argent, collared sable & langued gules grasping a flag gules, three trilliums argent barbed and seeded vert.
This does appear to be a supporter according to this precedent: [(Fieldless) A dog passant Or collared gules sustaining in its mouth a flagstaff flying a banner of the Cross of St. George] This fieldless badge appears to be a supporter maintaining a flag with arms on it. As we do not register supporters, we cannot register this. Moreover, we could not register Argent, a cross gules to the submitter because he does not have the right to display the Cross of Saint George as his own armory. [Luther Anshelm, 11/99, R-Caid]
However, Argent Snail argues that we should overturn this precedent based on supporters being almost always rampant and provided research directly to Wreath. For this reason we are pending this item to allow the college to discuss the question of does the posture of the creature effect its status as a supporter or an integral charge.
We expect that Argent Snail will provide the College of Arms with her research as part of this discussion.