Laurel Letter of Pends and Discussion (LoPaD): March 31, 2006

Society for Creative Anachronism

College of Arms

16308 SE 165th St

Renton, WA 98058-8221

+1-425-277-0763

herald@sca.org

For the January 2006 meetings, printed March 31, 2006

To all the College of Arms and all others who may read this missive, from Elisabeth Laurel, Jeanne Marie Wreath, and Margaret Pelican, greetings.

This letter contains the issues raised in the January 2006 LoAR for CoA discussion. The text in this letter is copied verbatim from that LoAR; it is provided here for convenience. As with a March 2006 LoI, these matters are currently scheduled for the Pelican and Wreath meetings in July 2006. Original commentary must be in the College's hands no later than May 31, 2006. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College's hands no later than June 30, 2006.

1. Avery d'Aragon. Name (see RETURNS for device).

Listed on the LoI as Auvere d'Aragon, the forms showed Avery d'Aragon. No mention was made on the LoI that a change had been made or of the reason for the change. Because the submitter made no request for authenticity, we are are at a loss to explain this. Changing a name without noting the original form and the reason for the change prevents the commenters from properly assessing the submitter's wishes and from doing research tailored to those wishes. We are changing the name back to the originally submitted form and pending it to allow the commenters a chance to assess whether the submitted form is registerable. The summarization of the documentation for Auvere d'Aragon and relevant comments from this round of commenting appear below.

The LoI summarized the name thus:

According to the paperwork: "References: "Registres des justices de Choisy-le-Temple et Châtenay, 1448-1478: éditions des registres Z2761 et 902 des Archives nationales/ édité s par le Centre d'étude d'histoire juridique. (Paris: Champion, 2000).

http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/french/choisy.html" ("Names from Choisy, France, 1475-1478," by Sara L. Uckelman c. [Jehan d'Aragon] 1478)

And Dauzat s.n. <Aragon> notes, unsurprisingly, that this was originally a byname for immigrants from Aragon.

Reaney & Wilson s.n. <Alfred> note that between 1292 and 1313 the name appears in Paris, both as a forename and as a byname, in the form <Auvere> (pronounced approximately \ow-v@-RAY\, with \OW\ as in <cow> and \@\ representing the sound of in <about> and <sofa>). Indeed, an instance of it as a Parisian forename in 1292 can be seen in Colm Dubh's 'An Index to the Given Names in the 1292 Census of Paris' at www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/paris.html

...and Aryanhwy merch Catmael added in commentary:

The fact that this was submitted as <Avery d'Aragon> should have been noted on the LoI, as well as an explanation of why the name was changed. Reaney & Wilson s.n. Averay have <Willelmus filius Averay> 1275, <Nicholas Auverey> 1273, <Walter Averay> 1275, and <Walter Averey> 1279, all of which are closer to his submitted spelling than <Auvere>.

This was item 2 on the Middle letter of September 20, 2005.

2. Justi Ormstunga. Name.

This name mixes Occitan with Old Norse; such combinations have not yet been examined. While there is ample evidence of contact between the Norse and French in Northern France, the evidence is far scantier for contact between the Provancel region and the Norsemen. While names combining Occitan and French may be registered without penalty, determinations of cultural contact must be examined for each language separately. We are pending this item to allow such examination.

The given name was documented from Flutre, Table des noms propres , which lists it as a name appearing in the Roman de Flamanca, a 12th C Provencal romance. We would like to remind the heraldic community that not all literary names are suitable for registration. When a name is documented from Flutre, further information should be gathered to show that the name is used by ordinary humans. In this case, all characters in this romance, a spoof on courtly love, appear to be regular people, so the given name is registerable.

His armory was registered under the name Justi of Atlantia.

This was item 41 on the Atlantia letter of September 27, 2005.

Pray know that I remain,

In service,

Elisabeth de Rossignol

Laurel Principal Queen of Arms