ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1382 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1382 ************************************ 15 Dec 1998 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether the name is an appropriate 12th to 14th century English feminine name, and if it could be combined with a Celtic surname. Here is what we have found. We haven't found an example of in our references, and we can't say for certain what name it represents. History writers generally don't preserve the historical spellings of names, so it wouldn't be surprising if the spelling in your book was one that didn't exist in period. We did find some very similar names, though. We could not verify that any 14th century member of the de Burgos family was named . The member of that family whose murder is famous is (or ), called the Brown Earl of Ulster, who lived 1312-33. According to our source, he had only one half-sister named . We did find a couple earlier members of the family whose names could conceivably have been recorded as : , wife of a different , Earl of Ulster 1248-71, and , wife of , Lord of Connacht 1227-43 [4]. In your period, was used for both men and women in England, and was a Latin feminine form of the name. We have found examples of women named 1332, 1379, and 1154-1189. The last example is a latinized form with a feminine ending, appropriate for written records, but normally the woman used one of the other forms, or possibly , which we find as a masculine form in 1284 [1, 2]. However, we found no form of that ends with , so we think is an unlikely period form. was an English feminine form of or . It is recorded as or 1273, 15th century [1]. This name is consistently spelled with a double in period English, so is not a likely variant. We're not sure exactly what you mean by a Celtic surname. Celtic is not a language; it is a modern term describing a family of languages and the cultures that spoke them. Welsh, Cornish, Breton, and Gaelic are all Celtic languages; they were quite distinct in period, with very different naming practices. By the 15th century, most English used inherited surnames, as in modern times. Many of those surnames were derived from Welsh or Cornish roots and some from Gaelic roots, so it is certainly possible that an Englishwoman of Welsh, Cornish, Irish, or Scottish Gaelic ancestry could have combined a given name like with such a surname. In Wales in particular, a great many English given names were used by Welsh families, and there are many examples of women with typical English given names and traditional Welsh surnames [3]. If you can tell us in more detail what you have in mind, we may be able to make some suggestion or direct you to some useful sources. We 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 Talan Gwynek and Margaret Makafee. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 15 Dec 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Withycombe, E.G., _The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names_, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), s.n. Giles, Gillian, Julian(a). [2] Talan Gwynek, "Feminine Given Names in _A Dictionary of English Surnames_" (SCA: KWHS Proceedings, 1994; WWW: J. Mittleman, 1997) http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/talan/reaney/ [3] Jones, Heather Rose (aka Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn), "Women's Names in the First Half of 16th Century Wales" (WWW: J. Mittleman 1998) http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/tangwystyl/welshWomen16/ [4] Tompsett, Brian C., "Directory of Royal Genealogical Data" (WWW: privately published, 1994-1998). Accessed 1 December 1998. http://www.dcs.hull.ac.uk/public/genealogy/royal/catalog.html