Last modified: May 6, 2007


Outlands College of Heralds

May 6, 2007
From the Office of the Castle Herald
Baronessa Francesca di Pavia, OP, OL
castle@outlandsheralds.org

UNTO the Outlands College of Heralds, our respected friends and colleagues who give freely of their time to provide commentary, and all others who come by these letters, on this 6th day of May, A.S. xxxxii (2007 CE), does Maestra Francesca di Pavia send greetings on behalf of The Honourable Lady Marie de Blois, White Stag Principal Herald.

Here follows the Kingdom of the Outlands Letter of Presentation for May 2007. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome. Errors found herein are undoubtedly mine.

Anyone may comment upon the items found herein, and e-mail commentary to the Rampart address is encouraged. Please have comments on items contained herein to Rampart, Furukusu Masahide-dono, by June 16, 2007, for the Rampart decision meeting tentatively scheduled for June 17, 2007.


Line Emblazon Sheet
Color Emblazon Sheet
May 2007 Letter of Presentation
June 2007 Letter of Response
June 2007 Letter of Intent
October 2007 LoAR Results
Return to the Rampart home page.

I present the following items for your consideration:

1. Angel d'Auvergne. Name and device resubmission. Ermine, a horse rampant purpure, on a chief sable three fleurs-de-lys argent.
(Dragonsspine) No gender specified. No other boxes checked.
The previous submission, Angel MacBridghe, was returned on the October 2007 LoAR: "As submitted, this name is two steps from period practice. First, it mixes English and Gaelic. Second, it uses a Gaelic matronymic. The given name is dated to the 16th C in England, so for a temporally consistent name we would suggest a late 15th C or 16th C Scots form of MacBride or a 16th C Anglicization of the Irish mac Giollabhrighde. Black, The Surnames of Scotland, s.n. MacBride, has Makilbred, Makgilbred, M'Gilbrid 1489-90, and M'Ilvreidin 1612. Woulfe, Irish Names and Surnames, s.n. Mac Giolla Bhríghde, lists M'Gillebridy, M'Gillvrid, M'Killbridy, and M'Elvride as Anglicizations from the late 16th and early 17th C. We would change the patronymic to one of these forms, but the submitter will not accept major changes such as the change in a language. In addition, Mac Bridghe and Mac Giolla Bhrighde are significantly different in sound and appearance, so we cannot change the patronymic to an appropriate Gaelic form." The device was returned for lack of a name with which to associate it, since a holding name was not acceptable to the client.
Angel:  The submission form cites "Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames" (pg 11). ??- should this be Withycombe maybe? The name does appear in Withycombe (pg 24 in my 1977 hardcover edition) states that the name in this spelling was found as a male name in England, especially Cornwall, from the 16th century onward. (Castle note: please say in your documentation what your source says about the name - not needing photocopies doesn't mean you can just state the name of the book and you're done!)
d'Auvergne: Academy of St. Gabriel report 1719 (http://www.panix.com/~gabriel/public-bin/showfinal.cgi/1719.txt) states that "Auvergne" is recorded in the 11th-12th Century.

2. Connal MacNachtan. New name and device. Per pale sable and argent, three bees counterchanged.
(Drygestan) Gender: Male. The client cares most about the sound of the name. No major changes accepted.
Connal:  Black, Surnames of Scotland, p. 168: "sn. CONNAL, CONNELL et al: 'Modern for Congal or Cingual, Cuthbert...Connell was a voter in the parish of Qwilton (now Coylton), 1513. Cf. Gille-Conal' s.n. GILLECONAL (.303)"
MacNachtan: Black, Surnames of Scotland, p. 547: "s.n. MACNACHTAN, MACNAUGHTAN, et al: 'q.v. Gillecrist Mac Nachtan granted the church of Kelmurkhe (Kilmorich) in 1247 to the Abbey of Inchaffray...Donald Macnachtane, son of an unmarried nobleman and an unmarried woman, was dean of Dunkeld in 1431...Sir Duncan McNachtan was dean of Dunkeld in 1438.' "

3. Delara-yi Shirazi. Device resubmission. Per pile inverted argent and purpure, a pegasus passant and two scimitars purpure.
(Dragonsspine)
The name is curently in submission; it was sent to Laurel on the January 2007 Letter of Intent.  The previous device submission, Azure and purpure gyronny, in base a pegasus passant, in chief two scimitars argent, was returned on the September 2006 Letter of Response: "The device is actually three piles in point, as a gyronny would have equal divisions, and they would be conjoined in the center of the field. Given that this is three piles, they violate Rfs.VIII.2.b.i - Contrast Requirements - which states that the field must have good contrast with all charges placed upon it. In this case, the three piles are of a color, and not a metal. Having a color (purple) on a colored field (blue) does not provide good contrast. Rfs.VIII.2.a - Contrasting Tinctures - defines good contrast, namely a metal on a color, or a color on a metal. This rule holds true even if this device were a form of gyronny. "

4. Domingo Diaz de la Vega. New badge. Sable, on a pale Or a cross of Santiago gules, two scallops Or.
(Caerthe)
The name was registered in April 2000.

5. Hassaan an-Najjar ar-Ruumii ibn 'Abd al-Azalii an-Najjar ibn 'Abd al-Baa'ith ar-Rashiid. New name and device.  Argent, upon a hand sable a bezant within a bordure gules.
(Dragonsspine) Gender: Male. The client cares most about the language/culture of the name, and wants an authentic Arabic name (period not specified). No major changes accepted.
"Period Arabic Names and Naming Practices" by Da'ud ibn Auda (http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/arabic-naming2.htm) [1];
"The One Hundred Most Beautiful Names of God" by Mustapha al-Muhaddith ibn al-Saqaat (http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/mustapha/cnamesofgod.html) [2]
I leave plowing through these articles for the documentation of this name as an exercise for the reader.
Email from Ursula Georges, Academy of St. Gabriel: "You asked about the masculine Arabic name <Hassan al-Najjar al-Rumi ibn abd al'Azalee al Najjar ibn al-Ba'eeth al Rashid>. You found the elements of the name in (the two articles cited above). The general structure of the name is reasonable, though you would probably have used just a given name and one or two bynames in all but the most formal situations. We do have a few comments about spelling, tansliteration and punctuation. Your two sources use different systems for transliterating Arabic into English. Following the transliteration system of  [1], your names could be written as <Hassan al-Najjar al-Rumi ibn and al'Azali al Najjar ibn Abd al-Ba'ith al Rashid>. Note that we have written <Abd al-Ba'ith>; <al-Ba'ith>, "Raiser from the Dead" is an epithet of God, while <Abd al-Ba'ith> means "servant of the Raiser from the Dead". A more accurate transliteration, using double letters to indicate Arabic long vowels, would be <H.assaan an-Najjaar ar-Ruumii ibn 'Abd al-Azalii an-Najjaar ibn 'Abd al-Baa'ith ar-Rashiid> (cites: Dodge, Baynard, The Fihrist of al-Nadim (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), and  "The Divine Names" by Aisha Bewley (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ABewley/names.html)) . (Here the period after the 'H' in <H.assaan> represents a small dot underneath that letter.) The spellings <an-Najjar> and <ar-Ruumii> reflect the Arabic pronunciation of these parts of the name: the 'l' in the definite article <al-> is not pronounced before an \N\ or \R\ sound." (Castle note: guys, if you have an email that is a critical part of your documentation, can you forward it to me so I can cut and paste instead of retyping the whole thing, with all the error potential that entails? I do not have OCR software, so scanning it in is not an option.)

6.  Seamus MacCrae. Name resubmission for Séamus MacDhùghaill.
(Dragonsspine). Gender: Male. The client cares most about the language/culture of the name, though what langualge/culture he believes that to be is not specified.
The previous submission was returned on the October 2006 LoAR for conflict: "This name is a direct conflict with Seamus mac Dubhghaill, registered June, 2006. To clear this conflict, we recommend that the submitter add a Gaelic descriptive byname.The spelling MacDhùghaill was documented from Black, The Surnames of Scotland. Please note that when Black documents a name as simply "Gaelic", he means that it is modern Gaelic. Unless documentation is provided showing that these spellings are found in period, they are, in general, not registerable. His armory was registered under the holding name Séamus of Dragonsspine."
Seamus: O'Corrain & Maguire, Irish Names, p. 162.
MacCrae: Black, Surnames of Scotland, pg 479.
(Castle note: heralds, remember to write on your submission forms what it says on those pages!!!)

7. Soren Thorvaldsson. New name and device. Vert, a beehive Or, on a chief argent two axes in saltire sable.
(Dragonsspine). Gender: Male. The client cares most about the language/culture of the name, and is interested in having an authentic Swedish/Scandinavian name (period not specified).
Soren: Academy of St. Gabriel Report 1952 (http://www.panix.com/~gabriel/public-bin/showfinal.cgi/1952.txt) states this name is derived from the name of St. Severinus, found in Denmark from1400 on. It is found in the spelling <Sojren> in 1403-1540, though <Sewryn> and <Sewren> were more common in the period. The name came to Norway ca. 1440 as <Sojren>, and was likely in use in Sweden by the 16th Century.
Thorvaldsson: Academy of St. Gabriel Report 3090 (http://www.panix.com/~gabriel/public-bin/showfinal.cgi/3090.txt) documents <Thorvaldr> as a 9th-10th-century Norwegian/Icelandic masculine name.


Thus ends the May 2007 Letter of Presentation. 

Your servant,

Francesca di Pavia
Castle Herald

Line Emblazon Sheet
Color Emblazon Sheet
May 2007 Letter of Presentation
June 2007 Letter of Response
June 2007 Letter of Intent
October 2007 LoAR Results
Return to the Rampart home page.