ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1389 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1389 ************************************ 9 Nov 1998 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for information about , which you want to use as a German masculine name. This letter is a brief answer to your question. If your aim is to find documentation for a name so that you can register it with the SCA College of Arms, we may or may not be able to help you. Documenting submissions isn't our focus: We want to help you to choose and use a name that fits the historical culture you are re-creating. Our research can sometimes be used to support submissions to the College of Arms, but that it not our goal and our results are often incompatible with the College's needs. If your main goal is to register a particular name, then we may not be able to help you. We have found no evidence that was used as a name in period. The only hint we could find that it has ever been used as a name is an entry in a name-your-baby database, which tells us nothing about pre-modern usage. If you have an example of as a period name, please send us the details and we'll be happy to consider the question again. Barring that, we suggest that you consider other names. You can find several lists of period German names on the web at: http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/german.html The surname is not grammatically correct. We're guessing that you want it to mean "of the Wolf" or "of the Wolves". In German names, the word precedes a place name, not a plural noun. If you intend this name to be descriptive (the wolf-like man) or attributive (the man who has wolves), this is not the right form to use. We can suggest three surnames that are fairly similar. was a given name in period Germany. A man in 14th Germany whose name was and whose father's name was might be called , which would have been understood to mean "Balthasar son of Wolf" [1]. In German cities, it was not unusual for a house to be named for its decoration, and people who lived there were often identified by the house-name. who lived at a house called might have been called "Alard at The Wolf" [1, 2]. The third possibility, and historically the rarest of the three, was a descriptive nickname, i.e. "Albrecht the Wolf" [1, 2]. We hope this brief letter has been useful. Please write us again if you have any questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Talan Gwynek and Raphael Van Antwerpen. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 9 Nov 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Talan Gwynek, "Medieval German Given Names from Silesia" (WWW: SCA, Inc., 1998). http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/bahlow_v.htm [2] Brechenmacher, Josef Karlmann, _Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Familiennamen_ (Limburg a. d. Lahn, C. A. Starke-Verlag, 1957-1960), s.nn. Wolf.