Unto the members of the College of Arms and all others who may read this missive do Shayk Da'ud ibn Auda, Laurel King of Arms, and Baron Talan Gwynek, Pelican King of Arms, send Greetings!

The September 1995 Laurel meeting was held on Saturday, September 16, 1995, and considered the following Letters of Intent: Middle (3/7); Trimaris (4/25, posted 5/3); Outlands (4/30, posted 5/3), East (5/1); Maxen Letter of Intent to Protect (5/6); An Tir (5/11); Middle (5/15); Atlantia (5/20); Outlands (5/23); West (5/25); and Meridies (5/31). Original commentary on these LoIs must have been in the College's hands no later than July 31, 1995. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must have been in the College's hands no later than August 31, 1995.

The October 1995 Laurel meeting is scheduled for Saturday, October 21, 1995, and will consider the following Letters of Intent: Caid (5/30, posted 6/7); Ansteorra (6/10); An Tir (6/13); Middle (6/14); Atlantia (6/19); Caid (6/20); Gold Falcon (6/21); West (6/22); Trimaris (6/25); Atenveldt (6/26); Ansteorra (6/28); and Meridies (6/30). Original commentary on these LoIs must have been in the College's hands no later than August 31, 1995. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College's hands no later than September 30, 1995.

The November 1995 Laurel meeting is scheduled for Saturday, November 18, 1995, and will consider the following Letters of Intent: Outlands (6/28, mailed 7/9); Rouge Scarpe Letter of Intent to Protect (7/5); Middle (7/7); Atlantia (7/11); An Tir (7/11); Caid (7/19); West (7/24); Calontir (7/26); and Atenveldt (7/28). Original commentary on these LoIs must be in the College's hands no later than September 30, 1995. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College's hands no later than October 31, 1995.

The December 1995 Laurel meeting is scheduled for Saturday, December 9, 1995, and will consider Letters of Intent dated and mailed in August. Original commentary on these LoIs must be in the College's hands no later than October 31, 1995. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College's hands no later than November 30, 1995.

Not all Letters of Intent may be considered when they are originally scheduled on this Cover Letter. Date of mailing of the LoI, date of receipt of the Laurel packet, or other factors may delay consideration of certain Letters of Intent. Additionally, not all Letters of Intent received have been scheduled because the administrative requirements (receipt of the forms packet, receipt of the necessary fees, etc.) have not yet been met.

ROSTER CHANGES

Maxen Dawel ap Morgan (PE at Large, West Kingdom), has a new address and telephone number. They are: Maxen Dawel ap Morgan (Seth Jones), 194 Brooklyn Ave. #2, San Jose, CA 95128; (408) 275-9755

Praerie (Middle) has a new title and permanent address. He is now the Shield Herald, and his address is: Paul Wickenden of Thanet (Paul W. Goldschmidt), 675 Staley Avenue, Platteville, WI 53818; (608) 348-6209; Goldschmidt@uwplatt.edu. (He had updated this in his July 26 LoC, but somehow I missed it. My sincere apologies, Paul!)

A CHANGE TO THE ALTERNATE TITLES LIST

In the January 2, 1995 Cover Letter, a proposal was made to change the Danish approved alternate title for lady from fru to frue. Because there had been no commentary at all on the proposal, it had slipped my mind until recently reminded of it. As a consequence of the research presented with that proposal, and given the lack of any opposition from anyone in the College, the accepted alternate title in Danish for lady is now frue.

FROM THE PELICAN'S POUCH

An Administrative Request to All Submissions Heralds Handling Pennsic Submissions. Please include the Pennsic Name Consultation Worksheet with the name form as documentation. When hard decisions are required, it may give me the clearest indication of what the client most wanted.

A Note of Thanks, and You're All Off the Hook. My sincere thanks to all commenters who have sent me single-sided commentary, extra copies, or disks. However, my arrangements with Laurel are such that I have no need of separate copies of electronic commentary, and I certainly don't want to put anyone to the trouble and expense of mailing a duplicate disk every month. I would appreciate receiving two hard copies of commentary from anyone who is not sending Laurel electronic commentary, however, so that I can file one in the usual way and set the other aside to be reviewed when decisions are made. (The electronic commentary I get in a single large file from Laurel, so it's ready to hand.)

A Request for Research. Several recent submissions have raised a question that we've never seriously addressed: what kinds of double surnames are period? Some kinds are well known to be authentic, like Old Norse <nickname> <patronymic> and mediæval English <patronymic/occupational/nickname> of <toponym>. And since the names found in early records are often more in the nature of descriptions than true names, considerable variation can be at least weakly justified for early names. The problem arises with late-period names. Typical hypothetical examples are John Pembroke Mills and Elizabeth York Macalester. Some of the discussion in Bardsley's Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature strongly suggests that names of this sort didn't make their appearance until the seventeenth century in England; for other countries and languages I have even less information. Therefore I am asking for any relevant information that anyone can find, for any of the languages and cultures with which we deal. I also welcome opinions on the level of acceptability of such names if they should indeed prove to be inauthentic.

Oops: An Alert. The submission form for Ronan ap Morgan (Meridies, 31 May 1995) was accompanied by documentation for Ronan consisting of photocopies of the relevant page of Hanks & Hodges' Dictionary of First Names and the title page from Withycombe! A submissions herald who isn't particularly familiar with name books could easily miss this, so let's hope that it's a rare slip-up and not the beginning of a constant nuisance.

Another Menace to Onomastic Society. Please add Augustus Wilfrid Dellquest's These Names of Ours: A Book of Surnames (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell) to the list of name books that are unacceptable as documentation. I haven't seen the book in its entirety, but in this case even a few pages submitted as documentation are enough to show that it is worthless for our purposes.

And Finally, Notes from a Dutch Uncle. These remarks are intended primarily for submissions heralds. The italicized statements have been culled from recent Letters of Intent and lightly edited; the rejoinders should speak for themselves. Mistakes like 1-4 can happen occasionally to anyone, but they shouldn't happen often; if they do, either you're making too many mistakes, or the people who feed you your information are doing so. Statements 5 and 6 provide no useful information and should be omitted; we can see that the submitted form is a variant, and presumably you wouldn't have sent it up if you hadn't thought it a reasonable one. If you have a case to make, make it; otherwise, it's better to let the name speak for itself.

1. All [of the given names are] dated to period [in a particular source]. In fact only one of the three is, and one isn't found at all in that source!

2. <Source> cites this as a feminine of <name>. In fact the supposed feminine form isn't mentioned at all in that source, and the name is described as a byname.

3. <Source> dates this surname ... to <date>. In fact the source doesn't even mention the name in the submitted form, citing a different form altogether.

4. <Source> cites this as the feminine form of <surname>. In fact the source in question never gives the feminine forms of surnames.

5. <Name> is a variant spelling of <name>. No justification is given, though one may very much be needed: after all, Khinnrye is clearly a variant spelling of Henry!

6. We feel that the variant spelling is acceptable. Fine; maybe it is. But why do you feel so? Better yet, why do you think so?

PENDED ITEMS, COMMENTARY ON

I was very disappointed at the lack of commentary, not just on the pended armory for Gwydden Lawen this month, but on all pended items. In the case of Gwydden Lawen, the only person who commented was the submitter himself. Given the issues involved, I had expected much more; at the very least, I expected to receive additional research from those who brought up the potential conflict to begin with.

The purpose of pending an item is to give the commenting members of the College the opportunity to research and comment on (i) the correct blazon, (ii) the correct emblazon, and/or (iii) special issues warranting extra commentary brought up in the commentary. As a consequence, all pended items should be treated as if they were submissions on a separate LoI. However, if no one is going to comment on a pended item, then the Kings of Arms must make decisions based on the commentary already in, and there is no point to pending the submission and requiring the submitter wait an additional three to four months for that decision.

JOB OPPORTUNITY

My warrant as Laurel expires at the end of June 1996, and my wife would like me to step down then and, among other things, join a motorcycle gang touring club. As a consequence, it is time to open the position up for bids. The workload of the office has been divided, so no one should feel obligated to take on the entire workload by themselves (Laurel particularly recommends against one person trying to do the entire job). In fact, I suspect that joint bids from groups of two or even three (administration, names processing, and armory processing) individuals might be preferred. If you think you might be interested in applying but have questions, please do not hesitate to contact either of the incumbents, Laurel or Pelican, to ask. Something to consider, in addition to who's going to do what work, are space for the files (currently 14 four-drawer filing cabinets, two shelf units containing 27 boxes of "to be archived" submissions files, five boxes of "currently in process" submissions, five boxes of binders with "archive" copies of armory, and about 20 more boxes of assorted books, etc.) and the computer, computer programs and documentation, backup tapes and disks, printer, photocopier and, by then, flatbed color scanner.

Bids should be made in writing to the Board of Directors, with a copy to Laurel and at least an announcement to the College of Arms, by November 30, 1995. This will give the members of the College until the end of December to send their comments and recommendations on the candidates to the Board for their January 1996 meeting, where a decision regarding succession will be made.

FLAGS

Appended to this LoAR is a list of national flags which are being added to the Armorial and Ordinary. Every effort has been made to ensure that the flags listed are the current version. (Several countries included in this list have changed their national flags within the last ten years.)

Some of the blazons are not as melodious or, in some cases, as clear as one would like; however, they are as accurate as could be under the circumstances. For example, the group of charges on the flag for St. Vincent and the Grenadines are blazoned as three lozenges two and one, nearly touching. What this group is the visual equivalent of is a lozenge charged with a saltorel, the topmost of the resulting four mini-lozenges being removed. No really good way of blazoning this in standard SCA heraldic terminology could be found, and so the above blazon resulted. In other cases, there is a tertiary charge on the flag consisting of the nation's coat of arms, or even its achievement of arms. Such arms or achievements have been blazoned (in parentheses) in full, so that researchers in the A&O would not have to go to another source to look them up separately.

MISCELLANY

MARTYRS WANTED

Volunteers are needed to be heralds or herald substitutes at all levels within the S.C.A. College of Heralds. Requirements for the job include the desire to spend your own money buying obscure books, photocopying forms and mailing reports, the ability to memorize and intimately analyze a huge body of meaningless, seemingly unrelated trivia, to baffle and frustrate laymen by citing cryptic rules and arcane precedents to justify arbitrary rejections, and the sincere desire to be horribly murdered by an enraged mob. Previous experience as a martyr is not required.

Suitable applicants will receive sincere thanks from the College of Heralds and eventual beatification from the College of Arms.

Joke "help wanted" flyer produced some years ago by that prolific author, "Anonymous"

Until next month, pray believe that I am, and remain,

Your faithful servant,

Da'ud ibn Auda

Laurel King of Arms