ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1858 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1858 ************************************ From: "Sara L Friedemann" 22 Nov 1999 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know if either or was used as women's nicknames during the SCA period. Here is the information we have found. You suggested 'the little (female) swan' on the basis of the nickname 'the little ewe', which you found in a list of late-period names from the south of France. [1] There are a few problems with this, however. First, the translation 'the little ewe' is conjectural; we aren't sure that is intended to represent Provenc,al 'ewe', so we aren't sure that the translation is correct. Secondly, we can find no evidence for a feminine diminutive of 'swan'. Finally, if it did exist, it would be feminine, and the adjective would be . (We don't know why the masculine form is used in ; it may simply be a scribal error.) There is also a possible problem of another kind: this was the nickname of a prostitute. We don't know whether nicknames of this type were particularly associated with prostitutes or not, but you might want to take this possibility into account. However we have found other examples of nicknames formed from animal characteristics, such as "ox-neck." We also know of a literary character known as "the swan," being one of several Old French spellings of the word. [2,3] Based on these, we believe that would be an appropriate French surname for a woman in the 13th or 14th century; the modern spelling was in used by the 13th century. Other spellings used that time are , , and . "swan-neck" is also a possible byname, based on the example of . We have no indication that existed in medieval French. For a selection of given names appropriate for this period, we recommend that you look at the 1292 Census of Paris, available on the web at: http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/paris.html We hope that this letter has been useful to you, and that you will not hesitate to write again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Arval Benicoeur, Talan Gwynek, and Raquel Buenaventura. For the Academy, ~Aryanhwy merch Catmael November 22, 1999 --------------------------------------- References: [1] Talan Gwynek, "Late Period Feminine Names from the South of France" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1999) [URL:http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/talan/latefrenchfem/]. [2] Dauzat, Albert, _Dictionnaire Etymologique des Noms de Famille et Prenoms de France_ (Paris: Libraire Larousse, 1987). s.n. Coldeboeuf [3] Langlois, Ernest, _Table des Noms Propres de toute nature compris dan les Chansons de Geste_ (New York: Burt Franklin, 1971 [1904]).