ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2018 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2018 ************************************ 3 May 2000 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate given name for an East Frisian woman of the late 12th or early 13th century, and if either or is an appropriate surname. You also asked our opinion of your design for your arms, a black field with a diagonal red stripe between a cauldron and a moon between a pair of waxing and waning crescents, all in silver. Here is what we have found. Your period pre-dates all our evidence of specifically Frisian names. We aren't sure whether names in earlier-period Frisia were noticeably different from those in other parts of the Low Countries. We'll give you our best suggestions based on the evidence we've got. We also aren't sure that the region that interests you was called in your period. The word means "land of the eastern Frisians", as distinguished from the Frisians who ended up on the other side of the Dutch Sea after it formed in the middle of the first millenium. We doubt there was much difference in your period between names in one part of Friesland and those in another. We have found no example of as a period name. We did find examples of it as a modern Dutch given name, but no evidence that it existed in your period [1]. You wrote that you'd found it on a list of East Frisian names on the web; perhaps you used the list at http://www.kabalarians.com/female/ost-f.htm Unfortunately, this is not a scholarly source and it does not tell us whether the name was used in medieval Frisia. Since we can't support the use of the name in period, we recommend you choose a different name. We found a few similar-sounding Dutch feminine names that you might consider [2]: Berehta Bergard Bergundis Beriungis Berna Bernewif Berneweif Berta You can find a longer list of medieval Dutch women's names on the web: Dutch Womens' Names before 1100 http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1336/name1100vr.html These names were recorded somewhat before your period, but we believe most of them were still in use as late as 1250. Some of them appear on this list in Latinized spellings; if you pick a few, we can suggest spellings and pronunciations appropriate to your period. A woman of your culture would probably have been identified by her given name alone in almost all circumstances. Assuming Frisian construction of women's names was similar to Dutch in the same period, it would be most appropriate for you to be identified as your father's daughter or as a resident of your home town [3]. We have not found evidence of a place called . It is a plausible name, but probably not in the region you want your name to fit. is High German word, while the Netherlands spoke Low German dialects. The Dutch cognate is , and the Frisian is ; we have found examples of surnames based on both these words in communities near the North Sea. The element is found in Low German, so we would not be surprised to find a medieval place in Frisia called , , or even [4]. That might have led to surnames like , , etc. You also asked about the byname , perhaps translated into some other language. We do not recommend this choice. It doesn't match any pattern of medieval byname formation that we know. Heraldic arms were invented in northwestern France in the mid-12th century. The custom of using arms spread through most of Europe by the end of our period, but not all cultures adopted it. We have seen no evidence of heraldry used in Frisia until several centuries after your period, so the best re-creation would be for you not to use arms at all. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use arms in the Society: Many Societyfolk use arms even though their personas would not have done so. Whether you use arms or not depends on how you think about authenticity and your persona. You can find a few thoughts on this issue in an article we've posted on the web: What Do I Use for Arms if my Persona Wouldn't Have Used Arms? http://www.s-gabriel.org/faq/nonheraldic.html The heraldic design you described could be blazoned "Sable, a bend gules between in chief a roundel between an increscent and a decrescent conjoined in fess and in base a cauldron argent." Unfortunately, this design is not compatible with any medieval style of heraldry that we've seen. The red stripe on the black background is the most obvious problem: It is "color-on-color", to use the heraldic jargon. The dark tinctures red, black, blue, green, and purple are considered "colors" in heraldry. The light tinctures gold/yellow and silver/white are classified as "metals", and one of the basic rules of heraldic design is that a color charge (like your stripe) in placed only on a metal field, not a color field. The SCA College of Arms enforces this rule in almost all cases, so your design would not be registerable, in addition to being historically implausible. Medieval heraldic designs -- especially in the very early period of heraldry that you're re-creating -- was very simple and very balanced. When a pair of charges was placed in symmetric positions on the shield, they were almost always identical charges. A cauldron doesn't balance a moon as well as it would another cauldron, and early medieval heraldry would almost certainly have used a pair of cauldrons. The imbalance is only increased by the addition of the two crescents around the moon. This motif -- moon and crescents -- is one that we've never seen in medieval heraldry, and we strongly recommend avoiding it. The best advice we can offer you is to choose a much simpler design. For example, you might consider a single cauldron on a plain background, or a set of three cauldrons. 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 Walraven van Nijmegen, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Raquel Bueneventura, Talan Gwynek, and Adelaide de Beaumont. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 3 May 2000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] The masculine form occurs in Low German as early as c.1300; it was a contracted form of . We have found feminine forms of in France, 9th-10th c. and 1080, but we have not found evidence that the contracted was feminized before modern times or that the masculine form survived as late as 1200 [Brechenmacher, Josef Karlmann, _Etymologisches Woerterbuch der deutschen Familiennamen_ (Limburg a. d. Lahn, C. A. Starke-Verlag, 1957-1960)]. We must therefore recommend that you choose another name. [2] Walraven van Nijmegen, "Dutch Womens' Names before 1100" (WWW: privately published). http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1336/name1100vr.html [3] Tavernier-Vereecken, C., _Gentse Naamkunde van ca. 1000 tot 1253: een bijdrage tot de kennis van het oudste middelnederlands_ (Belguim: 1968), s.n. Rininge and passim. [4] Bahlow, Hans, _Deutsches Namenlexikon : Familien- und Vornamen nach Ursprung und Sinn erklaert_ (Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985, 1990), s.nn. Holt, Rein.