Society for Creative Anachronism
College of Arms
2212 S. 64th Plaza, #418
Omaha, NE, 68106
+1 952 412 4112
laurel@heraldry.sca.org
For the June 2013 meetings, printed August 16, 2013
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 June Laurel decisions were made at the Pelican meeting held on Sunday, June 9, 2013 and the Wreath meeting held on Saturday, June 22, 2013, and at the Laurel Roadshow held on Sunday, June 30, 2013. These meetings considered the following letters of intent: West (28 Feb, 2013) (pushed due to lack of scan, packet), West (28 Feb, 2013) (pushed due to lack of scan, packet), Laurel LoPaD (03 Mar, 2013), Northshield (04 Mar, 2013), Middle (11 Mar, 2013), Drachenwald (21 Mar, 2013), Ealdormere (22 Mar, 2013), Calontir (25 Mar, 2013), Gleann Abhann (25 Mar, 2013), Atenveldt (26 Mar, 2013), Outlands (26 Mar, 2013), Atlantia (30 Mar, 2013), Caid (30 Mar, 2013), Caid Other Letter (30 Mar, 2013), East (30 Mar, 2013), An Tir (31 Mar, 2013), Ansteorra (31 Mar, 2013), Lochac (31 Mar, 2013), Meridies (31 Mar, 2013).  All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should have been entered into OSCAR by Friday, May 31, 2013.
The July Laurel decisions were made at the Pelican meeting held on Sunday, July 7, 2013 and the Wreath meeting held on Saturday, July 6, 2013. These meetings considered the following letters of intent: Laurel LoPaD (03 Apr, 2013), Northshield (04 Apr, 2013), Æthelmearc (10 Apr, 2013), Calontir (14 Apr, 2013), Trimaris (14 Apr, 2013), Ealdormere (18 Apr, 2013), Atenveldt (20 Apr, 2013), Outlands (21 Apr, 2013), Drachenwald (22 Apr, 2013), East (26 Apr, 2013), An Tir (28 Apr, 2013), Lochac (29 Apr, 2013), Middle (29 Apr, 2013), Atlantia (30 Apr, 2013), Caid (30 Apr, 2013), Gleann Abhann (30 Apr, 2013), Meridies (30 Apr, 2013), West (30 Apr, 2013), West (30 Apr, 2013).  All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should have been entered into OSCAR by Sunday, June 30, 2013.
The August Laurel decisions will be made at the Pelican meeting held on Sunday, August 18, 2013 and the Wreath meeting held on Saturday, August 17, 2013. These meetings will consider the following letters of intent: Northshield (10 May, 2013), Calontir (13 May, 2013), Ansteorra (16 May, 2013), Drachenwald (21 May, 2013), Caid (22 May, 2013), Ealdormere (23 May, 2013), East (23 May, 2013), Atenveldt (25 May, 2013), Caid (27 May, 2013), Outlands (28 May, 2013), Gleann Abhann (29 May, 2013), Middle (29 May, 2013), Æthelmearc (31 May, 2013), An Tir (31 May, 2013), Atlantia (31 May, 2013), Lochac (31 May, 2013), Meridies (31 May, 2013).  All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should have been entered into OSCAR by Wednesday, July 31, 2013.
The September Laurel decisions will be made at the Pelican meeting held on Sunday, September 15, 2013 and the Wreath meeting held on Saturday, September 14, 2013. These meetings will consider the following letters of intent: Laurel LoPaD (05 Jun, 2013), [Drachenwald LoItUP (06 Jun, 2013)], Atlantia (08 Jun, 2013), Middle (11 Jun, 2013), [Northshield (12 Jun, 2013)], Artemisia (13 Jun, 2013), [Outlands (20 Jun, 2013)], [Drachenwald (23 Jun, 2013)], Atenveldt (25 Jun, 2013), Ealdormere (25 Jun, 2013), [East (26 Jun, 2013)], [An Tir (27 Jun, 2013)], [Gleann Abhann (27 Jun, 2013)], [Calontir (29 Jun, 2013)], [Æthelmearc (30 Jun, 2013)], [Ansteorra (30 Jun, 2013)], Caid (30 Jun, 2013), [Lochac (30 Jun, 2013)], Meridies (30 Jun, 2013), [Trimaris (30 Jun, 2013)], [West (30 Jun, 2013)].  All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should be entered into OSCAR by Saturday, August 31, 2013.
The October Laurel decisions will be made at the Pelican and Wreath meetings held in October 2013. These meetings will consider the following letters of intent: Laurel LoPaD (09 Jul, 2013), [Northshield (09 Jul, 2013)], [Atlantia (12 Jul, 2013)], [Middle (13 Jul, 2013)], [Ealdormere (21 Jul, 2013)], [Drachenwald (22 Jul, 2013)], [East (27 Jul, 2013)], [Artemisia (28 Jul, 2013)], [Caid (29 Jul, 2013)], [An Tir (31 Jul, 2013)], [Ansteorra (31 Jul, 2013)], [Atenveldt (31 Jul, 2013)], [Gleann Abhann (31 Jul, 2013)], [Meridies (31 Jul, 2013)], [Outlands (31 Jul, 2013)], [West (31 Jul, 2013)].  All commentary, responses, and rebuttals should be entered into OSCAR by Monday, September 30, 2013.
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: Some Names Resources (An Ongoing Series)
As I start my fourth year writing this series, I want to return to a discussion of the naming resources and issues for specific cultures. I've had a particular request to talk about Eastern European languages, as our resources for them are a little skimpier than for Western Europe.
Russian is the Eastern European language for which we have the most information, and we'll sometimes depend on that information to make sense out of other areas. But it's got a lot of interesting features itself.
The main source for Russian name elements and the grammar that glues them together is Paul Wickenden of Thanet's A Dictionary of Period Russian Names, whose second edition is online (http://heraldry.sca.org/names/paul/) and third edition is available through the SCA Marketplace/Stock Clerk. This source uses a single transliteration system, the Library of Congress system, which is only one of the systems we allow. On the whole, this is a fantastic source. It has one serious weakness for our purposes; it only lists the earliest occurrence of any name. So, for example, Ivan is dated to 1181 in the entry for it, though Ivan was common through 1600 and later. This is particularly frustrating for saint's names, which are often listed with only a very early (3rd century, for example) citation, and must depend on the saint's name allowance for registerability.
The most common pattern for Russian names is a given name followed by a patronymic byname, a byname which describes you as your father's child. Patronymics normally are marked, which is to say that they change the father's name to say that it's a patronymic form. The rules are easy; they're based on how the father's name ends. The forms we're used to hearing today, which end in -vich, are pretty uncommon in period. More common are forms like Mikhailov or Vasil'ev; some names even end in -in for this patronymic form, like Borodin. Sometimes syn "son" was added either to the patronymic form of the father's name or to the unaltered form. For women, the grammar is just a hair different: the patronym must be feminized by adding -a to the end: Mikhailova, Vasil'eva, Borodina. They may be marked using doch' "daughter" (yes, the ' is a letter in Russian). The modern -ovna ending is only found a few times in the early 17th century.
Women are also frequently identified as their husband's wife, using zhena "wife" or again with only the modified form of her husband's name. They are even sometimes identified as someone's mother, with the relationship word mat' in place of doch' or zhena.
Back to men (though these patterns are registerable for women as well): Sometimes, two generations of patronymics (father and grandfather are included) and rarely names go back even further. Unmarked patronymics in Russian are rare but registerable; several citations that are most likely unmarked patronymic bynames in Russian can be found in the September 2007 Cover Letter. These unmarked patronymic bynames seem to be more frequently found in the Ukraine or Belarus rather than in Russia itself. A few other bynames of relationship (including matronymics, which name a man as his mother's son) are found for men; see the grammar section of the Dictionary (http://heraldry.sca.org/names/paul/zgrammar.html) for more details.
Other kinds of bynames are found less frequently. Descriptive bynames are described in the grammar section of Paul's Dictionary (the URL is given above). Paul has also written articles on certain kinds of descriptive bynames (occupational, animal-based, and plant-based); they are housed at his personal website (http://www.goldschp.net/archive/archive.html).
Locative bynames are discussed at length in his "Locative Bynames in Medieval Russia" (http://heraldry.sca.org/names/toprus.html). Unlike locative bynames in English, these names are at best rarely formed as a prepositional phrase (z Belina "of Belino"). Instead, they take noun or adjectival forms: Novgorodets "resident of Novgorod", Novgorodov "son of Novgorod", or Rostovskoi "the person from Rostov".
If all that's not enough, we have more good research that expands our collection of names (and name spellings) further: Predislava Vydrina, "Russian Personal Names: Name Frequency in the Novgorod Birch-Bark Letters" (http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/predslava/bbl/) and with late period data on name frequency, Marya Kargashina, "Names from Muscovite Judgment Charters; Diminutives as Documentary Forms and Name Frequency in Justice in Medieval Russia" (http://heraldry.sca.org/kwhss/2013/Marya_Kargashina/muscovite_namesrev.htm).
From Wreath: Handling Pairs and Sheaves in Arrangements
Commenters were asked to discuss how best to handle sheaves or pairs of charges combined with other charges in the same charge group. SENA A3D2c requires charges in a group to be in identical postures/orientations or in an arrangement that includes posture/orientation. It also states, "A charge group in which postures for different charges must be blazoned individually will not be allowed without period examples of that combination of postures." Precedent has said, "The charges here do not have comparable postures or orientations, but they also are not in a unified standard arrangement, as the two chisels in saltire must be blazoned separately from the crab in order to adequately describe their positioning. [William the Myllwright, R-Atenveldt, Dec 2012 LoAR]" However, does this precedent follow period practice? Commenters dug through many different armorials across all of Europe to find out.
Most cases of pairs of charges have a single pair of identical charges in saltire as the sole primary charge group. There were also examples of multiple pairs of identical charges in the same charge group. More uncommon were examples of non-identical charges in saltire, most typically a key or a sword and another charge, as they tended to be ecclesiastically related. There were no examples found of multiple pairs of non-identical charges in the same charge group.
For an example of multiple pairs of charges in the same design, the arms of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, granted in 1512, are Azure, three dolphins naiant embowed in pale argent finned toothed and crowned Or between two pairs of stockfish in saltire argent over the mouth of each fish a crown Or, on a chief gules three pairs of keys of St Peter in saltire.
Most cases of a sheaf of charges were sheaves of arrows. There were other examples of three identical charges arranged in a sheaf, and a few example of two charges in saltire surmounted by a different charge palewise, again typically ecclesiastical in nature, such as two keys in saltire surmounted by a crozier. Again, the vast majority of examples were of a single sheaf as the sole primary charge group.
For an example of multiple sheaves of charges in the same design, the arms of Nicholas Robinson, Bishop of Bangor from 1566-1585, are given by Parker as Azure, a chevron between three sheaves of arrows argent.
It is tempting to consider a sheaf of charges as a single charge, but it is not: it has long been considered as heraldic shorthand for two charges in saltire surmounted by a third charge palewise, and the charges that make up the sheaf are counted individually for purposes of differencing by number. Likewise, while it is tempting to consider a pair of charges in saltire as a single charge, it is not; it is clearly two separate charges arranged in saltire. However, SENA A3D2c does not concern counting charges, merely their placement upon the field in a period arrangement.
Given the period examples, we are overturning past precedent forbidding the combination of a charge and two other charges in saltire, or other similar combinations. We will henceforth treat a pair of charges in saltire and a sheaf of charges as a single unit only for purposes of arrangement under SENA A3D2c. As always, the entire charge group must be in a blazonable period arrangement, such as two and one, in fess, in cross, etc.
Society Pages
On June 22, at Summits Investiture in An Tir, the Throne Favor of the Summits, given for notable contributions to the Principality of the Summits, was bestowed upon Alisoun MacCoul of Elphane, Metron Ariston Herald, for her work translating documents and scroll texts into medieval Latin.
On July 6, at An Tir West War, Marya Kargashina, Æstel Herald, was admitted into the Order of the Goutté de Sang, a grant-level award given by the Crown of An Tir to those who have given excellent service to the Kingdom.
On July 13, at the Stormhold Baronial Investiture in Lochac, Baron Karl Faustus von Aachen, Crux Australis Principal Herald, was granted by Their Majesties Lochac an Augmentation of Arms for long service to the Kingdom as a Herald and specifically as Crux Australis.
On July 20, at An Tir's Coronation, Their Majesties named Elisabeth de Rossignol, Pomegranate Herald and former Laurel, a Lion of An Tir. The Lion of An Tir is given at most once per reign.
Also at An Tir's Coronation, Saewynn Silfrahrafn, a long-time voice herald, was awarded a personal heraldic title.
And finally, on July 24 at the bright and shining hour of 2:30 A.M., the Society's newest herald was born to proud parents Istvan Non Scripta and Marie Palimpsest. Eleanor already has the lungs of a herald.
Please send information about happenings to major heralds and major happenings to all heralds to Laurel, so that it can be published here.
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 one copy of any associated documentation, including petitions) to the SCA College of Arms, 3101 Lee Hwy Ste 18/19 #178, Bristol VA 24202.
Checks or money orders for submissions, payable to "SCA Inc.-College of Arms" are to be sent to John C. Sandstrom, New Mexico State University, PO Box 30006/MSC 3475, Las Cruces, NM 88003.
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.
For all administrative matters, please contact Laurel.
Pray know that I remain,
In service,
Gabriel Kjotvason
Laurel Principal King of Arms