ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1102 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1102 ************************************ 25 Jul 1998 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for help choosing a late 12th or early 13th century Scottish name to replace the name . Here is what we have found. Before you can choose a Scottish name, you need to decide in which Scottish culture you want to set your persona. In your period, Scotland was inhabited by people who spoke Old English, Gaelic, Norse, and Norman French. The English speakers lived predominantly in the southeast, the Gaels to their north and west, the Norse in the north and the isles, and the Normans in scattered settlements mostly in the south. By the end of your period, Old English had begun to evolve into Scots, the language of the Scottish Lowlands in the last centuries of our period. For more information about the languages of Scotland, please read "Scottish Names 101", on the web at http://www.stanford.edu/~skrossa/medievalscotland/scot_names_101.html The area you mentioned, between Hadrian's Wall and the Lammermuir Hills, is in the southeast of Scotland, where English/Scots and Norman French influence was greatest. The name you've been using is a mixture of Gaelic elements with Scots or English elements. is a Gaelic adapation of the English or Norman . It appears in modern Gaelic as , but we have no evidence that it was used in period Gaelic. The English name is recorded as in 1273 and in 1379 [1, 2]. It would be a fine name for an English, Scots, or Norman-French speaker living in southeastern Scotland in your period. is an English or Scots name, originally a diminutive of . It is recorded in this spelling in England in 1210 and in Aberdeenshire in 1398 [1, 3]. The patronymic prefix is appropriate only in a Gaelic name; since neither nor was used in Gaelic in your period, as far as we know, we're assuming that you don't want a Gaelic name. In discussion on alt.heraldry.sca, you explained that you made up the name , trying to make it mean "red hill". We do not recognize Gaelic, English or Norman roots in the name, so we can't say whether it is appropriate for your period. If you tell us more about it, we may be able to give a better opinion; but in general, a made-up name is not as good re-creation as a historical name. If you'd like a place name that means "red hill" and is appropriate to your persona, we'd be happy to investigate that possibility for you. Putting it all together, would be a fine name for an English or Scots speaker in 13th century southeastern Scotland. The name would have been understood to mean "Gawyne, son of Eliot". If you pick a place to be your home, e.g. , you could also call yourself . It would be entirely appropriate to use these two forms interchangably: People in your period were commonly known by different descriptive surnames in different circumstances. In your letter, you listed several other names that you were considering: , , , , . Except for a couple spelling errors, these names all appear in a list of late 13th and early 14th century Scots names taken from the epic "The Bruce" [4]. Your web browser apparently can't display an "ess-tzet", a character used in some period scripts to represent a final 's'. The surname that you read as is actually (meaning "the red"), and the given name you read as should be . With these corrections, any of these names would be a fine choice for a Scots-speaking persona around 1300. Most of them would be suitable in your period, a century earlier, too; but they might have had different spellings. If you'd like more information about a particular one of these names, please write us again. I hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Barak Raz, Talan Gwynek, Tangwystyl vz. Morgant Glasfryn, Walraven van Nijmegen, and Effrick neyn Kenyeoch. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 25 Jul 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Withycombe, E.G., _The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names_, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). [2] Morgan, Peadar, _Ainmean Chloinne: Scottish Gaelic Names for Children_ (Scotland: Taigh na Teud Music Publishers, 1989). [3] Black, George F., _The Surnames of Scotland: Their Origin, Meaning and History_, (New York: The New York Public Library, 1986), s.n. Eliotson. [4] Symon Freser of Lovat, "13th & 14th Century Scottish Names" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1996). http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/scottish14/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -