September 2011 Letter of Acceptances and Returns

Society for Creative Anachronism
College of Arms

2212 S. 64th Plaza, #418
Omaha, NE, 68106
+1 952 412 4112
[email protected]

For the September 2011 meetings, printed Sunday, November 6, 2011

To all the College of Arms and all others who may read this missive, from Gabriel Laurel, Juliana Pelican, and Emma Wreath, greetings.

Items listed below in square brackets have not been scheduled yet. For information about future scheduling, please review the status table located on the Web at http://oscar.sca.org/index.php?action=137.

The September Laurel decisions were made at the Wreath meeting held on Saturday, September 10, 2011 and the Pelican meeting held on Sunday, September 25, 2011. These meetings considered the following letters of intent: Middle (05 Jun, 2011), Laurel LoPaD (07 Jun, 2011), Æthelmearc (08 Jun, 2011), East (16 Jun, 2011), Atenveldt (20 Jun, 2011), Caid (22 Jun, 2011), Drachenwald (28 Jun, 2011), Meridies (28 Jun, 2011), Caid (29 Jun, 2011), Lochac (29 Jun, 2011), Trimaris (29 Jun, 2011), An Tir (30 Jun, 2011), Ansteorra (30 Jun, 2011), Calontir (30 Jun, 2011), Gleann Abhann (30 Jun, 2011), Laurel (30 Jun, 2011), and Outlands (30 Jun, 2011). All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should have been entered into OSCAR by Wednesday, August 31, 2011.

The October Laurel decisions were made at the Pelican meeting held on Sunday, October 9, 2011 and the Wreath meeting held on Saturday, October 15, 2011. These meetings considered the following letters of intent: Gleann Abhann (10 Jul, 2011), East (13 Jul, 2011), Laurel LoPaD (13 Jul, 2011), West (13 Jul, 2011), Atenveldt (15 Jul, 2011), Middle (17 Jul, 2011), Æthelmearc (18 Jul, 2011), Calontir (26 Jul, 2011), Drachenwald (27 Jul, 2011), Meridies (29 Jul, 2011), Ansteorra (30 Jul, 2011), Artemisia (31 Jul, 2011), Atlantia (31 Jul, 2011), Caid (31 Jul, 2011), and Lochac (31 Jul, 2011). All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should have been entered into OSCAR by Friday, September 30, 2011.

The November Laurel decisions will be made at the Pelican Roadshow held on Saturday, November 5, 2011, at the Wreath Roadshow held on Saturday, November 13, 2011, at the Pelican meeting held on Sunday, November 13, 2011 and at the Wreath meeting held on Saturday, November 19, 2011. These meetings will consider the following letters of intent: An Tir (05 Aug, 2011), Æthelmearc (19 Aug, 2011), Calontir (19 Aug, 2011), Atenveldt (20 Aug, 2011), Calontir (25 Aug, 2011), Middle (27 Aug, 2011), Trimaris (27 Aug, 2011), Caid (28 Aug, 2011), Middle (28 Aug, 2011), An Tir (30 Aug, 2011), Gleann Abhann (30 Aug, 2011), Lochac (30 Aug, 2011), Meridies (30 Aug, 2011), Ansteorra (31 Aug, 2011), Artemisia (31 Aug, 2011), Atlantia (31 Aug, 2011), East (31 Aug, 2011), Laurel LoPaD (31 Aug, 2011), and Outlands (31 Aug, 2011). All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should have been entered into OSCAR by Monday, October 31, 2011.

The December Laurel decisions will be made at the Wreath meeting held on Saturday, December 17, 2011 and at the Pelican meeting held on Sunday, December 18, 2011. These meetings will consider the following letters of intent: West (02 Sep, 2011), Laurel LoPaD (15 Sep, 2011), Caid (18 Sep, 2011), Atenveldt (25 Sep, 2011), Ealdormere (25 Sep, 2011), Calontir (26 Sep, 2011), Ealdormere (26 Sep, 2011), Middle (26 Sep, 2011), An Tir (27 Sep, 2011), Drachenwald (27 Sep, 2011), Ealdormere (27 Sep, 2011), Ansteorra (29 Sep, 2011), Lochac (29 Sep, 2011), Meridies (29 Sep, 2011), Outlands (29 Sep, 2011), Artemisia (30 Sep, 2011), Atlantia (30 Sep, 2011), Caid (30 Sep, 2011), and West (30 Sep, 2011). All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should be entered into OSCAR by Wednesday, November 30, 2011.

The January Laurel decisions will be made at the Pelican and Wreath meetings held in January 2012. These meetings will consider the following letters of intent: [Northshield (06 Aug, 2011)] (pushed due to lack of packet and scans), Laurel LoPaD (08 Oct, 2011), [Trimaris (09 Oct, 2011)], East (12 Oct, 2011), [Atenveldt (20 Oct, 2011)], [Drachenwald (22 Oct, 2011)], [Middle (23 Oct, 2011)], Ansteorra (25 Oct, 2011), [Lochac (25 Oct, 2011)], [Meridies (26 Oct, 2011)], An Tir (29 Oct, 2011), [Caid (30 Oct, 2011)], [Gleann Abhann (31 Oct, 2011)], [Northshield (31 Oct, 2011)], [Outlands (31 Oct, 2011)], and [West (31 Oct, 2011)]. All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should be entered into OSCAR by Saturday, December 31, 2011.

Not all letters of intent may be considered when they are originally scheduled on this cover letter. The date of posting of the LoI, date of receipt of the Laurel packet, or other factors may delay consideration of certain letters of intent. Additionally, some letters of intent received may not have been scheduled because the administrative requirements (receipt of the forms packet, receipt of the necessary fees, et cetera) have not yet been met.

REMINDER: Until all administrative requirements are met, the letter may not be scheduled.

From Pelican: A Proposal for Byname Presumption

This month we were asked to consider whether the name Isaac Masters could be registered. The name Masters is not directly a claim to be a master; names formed with the possessive -s are generally patronymic in origin (making this equivalent to Masterson). This name is pended for further discussion of the issue of what sorts of bynames should be considered presumptuous. Current precedent is mixed and somewhat contradictory; some names that are derived from (but not identical to) a title have been allowed, while others have been returned. However, having looked over most of the relevant precedents, we believe we see a pattern for what has been considered allowable and what presumptuous. Therefore, we would like discussion on the following proposal.

The combination of bynames would be considered in the same way: adding a locative element after a byname like Visconti would not be presumptuous, as Visconti da Firenze is not a claim to be the viscount of Florence (that'd be Visconte di Firenze).

From Pelican: Some Name Resources (a series)

As I talked about Gaelic and Anglicized Irish names back in October of 2010, we're ready to move on to Welsh. The most important thing you need to know about what we know about Welsh names in the SCA is a name: Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn. Tangwystyl has been doing research on Welsh names since the 1980s. And if you go to the section on Welsh, Breton, and Brythonic Names at the Academy of Saint Gabriel Library (http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/pceltic.shtml), you'll discover that she's written more articles about the names of this area than every other writer combined. A few of her print articles are now considered outdated (even by her; especially by her), such as the articles appearing in A Welsh Miscellany, CA 66. It was published nearly 20 years ago, and should not be used as documentation. The reason is simple: it combines legendary early names with late period names, all written using 20th century spellings. This matters for two reasons. While we'll register an early Welsh name, we will not register it in spellings found only in the 20th century. In fact, we will not register names in spellings that aren't found in period from any language. Second, we require names to follow certain rules for temporal compatibility, so we need to know whether a name is used in the 6th century or the 16th century.

So, what do you need to know about Welsh, other than those articles? First, the biggest issue about Welsh is the issue of orthography, how names are written down. Modern Welsh spelling (keep thinking orthography, for us technical folks) is very different from medieval Welsh spellings; for most of the Middle Ages, dd and rh do not appear. Their sounds are represented in writing by d and r. By the sixteenth century, something like modern Welsh spelling is beginning to appear. So, names that appear today as Dafydd and Rhys appear in Welsh contexts during the Middle Ages as David (or Davyd) and Res (or Rys/Ris). It's only very close to 1600 that spellings like the modern ones become at all common. One good source to look at medieval Welsh spellings is "Welsh Prose: 1350-1425" (http://www.rhyddiaithganoloesol.caerdydd.ac.uk/en/). So if you want a name that looks like modern Welsh names, you need to aim for late period. Authenticity requests for the 13th century will create names that look very different than modern Welsh. Names that had fallen out of use by the 16th century (even if they were revived in modern times) often simply cannot be registered in their modern spellings.

The situation of reconstructing spellings is made more complicated by the fact that some of our best records for Welsh names are created by English writers, who often are unfamiliar with the Welsh language and so wind up mangling Welsh names. Others are Latinized, and so use Latin spelling conventions to render names. Thus, sometimes the documentary forms we have for names do not reflect the Welsh of that time. Of course, we'll register the Anglicized or Latinized forms of Welsh names, even in combination or combined with Welsh spellings (though we require each given name or byname to match internally). If you want to create Welsh forms of names only documented in English or Latinized forms, we can accept evidence of Welsh spellings of words with similar sounds from the same time period to reconstruct Welsh spellings from that time. But this is tricky and probably should only be done with the help of an expert.

From Wreath: Revisiting Maintained and Sustained Charges Yet Again

This month we were asked to consider a device for Sarah de Warenne in which one of the primary charges, a lion, is holding another charge, in this case a halberd. Under current precedent, whether a charge is a sustained or maintained charge is determined by a comparison of the longest dimensions of the charge and the charge touching it.

In this specific case, as the longest dimension of the halberd is equal to the longest dimension of the lion holding it, the halberd is a sustained charge and thus there are three types of charges in the primary charge group: a violation of section VIII.1.a of the Rules for submission, Armorial Simplicity, which requires that "three or more types of charges should not be used in the same group."

However, the visual weight of the halberd in this device strongly suggests that it should be considered a maintained charge. Precedent holds that "Our practice has been to ignore maintained charges when defining a device as simple armory for the purposes of this rule and RfS X.2. [Elise l'Éstrange, 05-2005, A-An Tir]" If the halberd is a maintained charge, then the device does not violate the armorial simplicity rule, and may be registered.

We therefore invite commenters to discuss modifying our standards on defining maintained and sustained charges, taking into account the following points:

Send What to Whom

Letters of Intent, Comment, Response, Correction, et cetera are to be posted to the OSCAR online system. No paper copies need be sent.

Submission packets (one copy of each name form plus documentation, including petitions; two colored copies of each armory form plus two copies of any associated documentation, including petitions) to the SCA College of Arms, PO Box 31755, Billings, MT 59107-1755.

Cheques or money orders for submissions, payable to "SCA Inc.-College of Arms" are to be sent to David Duggar, Attn: Laurel Chancellor of Exchequer, 1705 Holiday Pl, Bossier City, LA 71112-3706.

Send roster changes and corrections to Laurel. College of Arms members may also request a copy of the current roster from Laurel.

For a paper copy of a LoAR, please contact Laurel, at the address above. The cost for one LoAR is $3. Please make all checks or money orders payable to "SCA Inc.-College of Arms". The electronic copy of the LoAR is available free of charge. To subscribe to the mailings of the electronic copy, please see the bottom of http://heraldry.sca.org/heraldry/lists.html#lists for more instructions.