Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 217

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 217

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/217

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

Greetings,

Here is the information we found on the name "Wolfram Gottfried" as used in Germany from 1000-1400.

"Wolfram" and "Gottfried" are common German names in this period; we were able to date forms of both to the 11th century. "Gottfried" in this name is a patronymic; that is, it indicates that you are the son of Gottfried.

Your device idea of a red charge on a black and white checkered field is perfectly reasonable. A black and white checkered pattern will contrast with any color. In medieval heraldry, it's most common to put either an ordinary (a simple geometric charge) or a single object a checked field. We recommend that you look through a book of medieval heraldry to see some examples of medieval charges. We've given some suggestions below.

The best book for this is "A Dictionary of Heraldry" by Joseph Foster, which has thousands of real coats of arms in it.

You could also look at "A Complete Guide to Heraldry" by Arthur Fox-Davies, which has pictures of many charges. Not all of them were used in medieval heraldry, but you can always ask us for more information about charges which interest you.

For German heraldry, you can read Siebmacher's _Wappenbuch_. The full bibliographic reference is "J. Siebmacher. Wappenbuch. Dortmund: Harenberg Kommunication, 1989. facsimile of 1605 ed."

Finally, there's a Web page with pictures of a German roll of arms from the 1340's. The URL is

http://people.delphi.com/ivanor/zroaen0.htm

If you discuss your arms with people, you may be told that it's "too simple to pass." This is probably not true. It is a very common misconception that simple arms will necessarily conflict with something that already exists, but even the simplest arms generally don't won't conflict with existing armory. We will conflict-check any arms you would like to use so that you'll know that they don't conflict with existing arms.

Arval D'Espas Nord, Elsbeth Anne Roth, Walraven van Nijmege, and Zenobia Naphtali all contributed to this letter.

We hope this has been helpful, and that we can continue to assist you.

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel