Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 208

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 208

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/208

Some of the Academy's early reports contain errors that we haven't yet corrected. Please use it with caution.

Greetings,

Here's the information we found on a name for your persona, a 13th-century Welsh-English archer.

There was enough contact between English and Welsh in the 13th century that it's reasonable for a Welshman to have ended up in England. We can look for Welsh names which were found in England at this time, but it's rather difficult to look through all Welsh names. If you could provide some ideas for a starting point (even something as simple as an initial letter), we could provide some suggestions.

In the 13th century, surnames weren't generally used in England--almost all people had some kind of descriptive byname. There's a good chance that you would have been known as "the Welsh guy." The names "Waleis" and "Welsh" were both used to describe people from Wales. There were also a large number of names for archers. We've included a number of names (with spelling variants) from

"Middle English Occupational Terms" by Thuresson has:

  • "schotier" (i.e. "shooter")

    "A Dictionary of British Surnames" by Reaney & Wilson notes:

    We have never seen an example of "Celtic" artistic motifs in any medieval coat of arms. Medieval heralds developed a distinctive way of characterizing heraldry. Furthermore, most of what we think of as "Celtic" design is based on examples which predate heraldry by several centuries, and are generally Irish. Using Celtic motifs in heraldry is like performing a classical symphony using Japanese instruments--it's a combination which is possible only in the modern era.

    We're assuming that you included the arrows because you're an archer. We would recommend against doing this--including "tools of your trade" into your arms is a cliche of SCA heraldry which was not very common in the Middle Ages. Although some tradesmen and merchants included the tools of their trade in their arms, we have very few examples of warriors like archers including arrows in their coats of arms. The snake, on the other hand, is found in heraldry from your period and we can suggest a number of arms which include snakes. The example we found shows a snake upright on its coils; it would probably also be appropriate to show a snake shown from above, as if slithering along.

    Tangwystl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Arval D'Espas Nord, and Elsbeth Anne Roth contributed to this letter.

    We hope this has been helpful. If we can be of further assistance, please let us know.

    In service,
    Alan Fairfax
    Academy of S. Gabriel