ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1897 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1897 ************************************ From: "Sara L Friedemann" 2 Jan 2000 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know if the masculine name would have been used by a Spanish man living between 1200 and 1550. You also asked for help creating arms that resembled your ancestral arms, "Or, a tower azure and a ford proper," and were thinking of a gold field, a red angel over a blue castle, and a base barry-wavy blue and silver. Here is the information we have found. In our sources for Iberian names, is a very rare name; we found only a handful of examples, and only one as a given name: c. 89. [1] (The represents the n-tilde used in Spanish. It is pronounced like the in . We have found a few examples of used as a surname: and his father , 1535, and his father , 1554, , and , 1557. [4,10] The last of these indicates that was from a place called . In the other people, the surname could have derived from a given name , but we have no direct evidence for this. We recommend that if you want to use , you consider using it as your surname, not your given name. was originally an attributive name of the Virgin Mary. These didn't become used as given names by regular people until after 1600. [9] We could not find in any of our surname sources. The most similar surname we found is , recorded in Galicia as early as 1538. It was originally a locative surname (i.e., a surname that indicated where the bearer lived), and we find it as both and . [2,3] It could be that is a modern variant of this surname; we are not sure. If you'd like to consider different choices for your given name or surname, we recommend the following articles available in our library: "Catalan Names from 12th & 13th Century Charters" http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/arval/catalan/ "16th Century Men's Names" http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kvs/mnames.html A more regular blazon for your arms would be "Or, in pale an angel gules, a castle azure, and a ford proper." Angels are very rare charges in period arms, with only a few known examples and none from Spain. [5] Also, we suspect that you are including an angel in your arms to allude to your name. This is a common heraldic practice known as "canting." However, canting armory almost always plays off a person's surname rather than his given name. The combination of a rare charge in a rare form of canting is too unlikely for us to recommend. Castles and towers were very popular in Spanish armory; we even find a coat of arms from a 16th century roll that has a tower and a base wavy barry wavy; this makes the motif found in your family arms an excellent starting point. [6] We also found a number of examples of towers emerging from bridges. [7] There are number of ways that you could show relationship to the family that bore the arms "Or, a tower azure and a ford proper." You could change the tincture (color) of one of the charges, e.g., making the tower gules (red) instead of azure (blue); you could change the tower to a tower emerging from a bridge; or you can add a bordure, a narrow strip that follows the edge of the shield, to the arms [8]: "Or, a tower gules and a ford proper." "Or, a tower atop a bridge throughout azure issuant from a ford proper." "Or, a tower azure, a ford proper, and a bordure azure." Any of these would be reasonable designs indicating relationship to "Or, a tower azure and a ford proper." In the last design, the bordure overlies the ford. 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 Pedro de Alcazar, Antonio Miguel de Santos Borja, Juliana de Luna, Adelaide de Beaumont, Walraven van Nijmegen, Elsbeth Anne Roth, Modar Neznanich, Arval Benicoeur, Rouland Carre, Alan Fairfax, Blaise de Cormeilles, Walraven van Nijmegen, and Talan Gwynek. For the Academy, ~Aryanhwy merch Catmael January 2, 2000 --------------------------------------- References and Notes: [1] Sua/rez de Peralta, Juan, _Tratado del descubrimiento de las Indias_ (estudio preliminar y notas, Teresa Silva Tena). México, D.F. : Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1990. [2] De Atienza, Julio, _Nobilario Espan~ol_ (Madrid: Aguilar SA de Ediciones, 1954). s.n. Taboada [3] Romera Iruela, Luis, and Ma. del Carmen Galbis Di/ez, _Catalogo de Pasajeros a Indias, Siglos XVI, XVII, y XVIII_ (Sevilla: Archivo General de Indias, 1980). s.n. Taboada [4] The slash represents an accent over the previous letter. [5] Parker, James, _A Glossary of Terms used in Heraldry_ (Charles E. Tuttle, 1982). s.v. Angel [6] Riquier, Marti/n de, _Hera/ldica castellana en tiempos de los reyes cato/licos_ (Barcelona: Ediciones dels Quederns Crema, 1986). Riquier, Marti/n de, _Heraldica Catalana des de l'any 1150 al 1550_, Ediciones dels Quederns Crema, Barcelona, 1983. [7] Pidal, Faustino Menendez & Elena Gomez Perez, _Matrices de Sellos Espanoles_ (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 1987). [8] Pedro de Alcazar, _Cadencing Practices in Europe_, (WWW: Self-published.) . [9] Menendez-Pidal, Ramon, "Onomastica inspirada en el culto marianico", 1 Cuadernos del Idioma: Revista de Cultura y Pensamento 9-16 (1965). [10] Catalonia, 1389 Marsa/, Francisco, et al. _Onoma/stica Barcelonesa del Siglo XIV_ (Barcelona: University of Barcelona, 1977).