Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 336

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 336

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/336

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 "Tiernan Diego of the Waters" and your arms "Barry wavy argent and vert, a Latin cross sable, which you wanted to use for the 11th century.

"Tiernan" is an Anglicization of the Irish name "Tigernán." "Tigernán" was used as a name from the 10th century onwards, but we didn't find any examples of the Anglicized form "Tiernan" until after 1600. You could use "Tiernan" as a 16th-century Irish name, but not as an 11th-century name.

"Diego" is an old Spanish name; our first example dates to 916. It derives from the Latin "Jacobus," the name which entered English as "Jacob" and "James."

"of the Waters" makes good sense in modern English, but "of the" is very rare in English bynames, and we haven't found any examples using the plural "Waters". In medieval English records this meaning was most commonly expressed by the bynames "atte Water", "Bithewater" (i.e., by the water), and "de la Water", any of which would be suitable for an Englishman of the 13th or 14th century. Both "atte Water" and "Bithewater" would have been used in everyday speech; "de la Water" was probably used only in formal documents.

The three names you chose were used in different times and places. "Tiernan" is only found in late-period Ireland. "Diego" was used in Spain and Portugal throughout our period. "atte Water" or "de la Water" were found in England in the 13th and 14th centuries. No one person could have had all these names.

In general, two languages were mixed in medieval names only when the two cultures had extensive interaction. People who travelled long distances were generally given names in the language of the area they travelled to, so that Janos, King of Bohemia, was known as "Jean de Boheme" in France. Unless there is evidence that languages were mixed in period, a name which combines languages is extremely unlikely. We have found no evidence of period Irish/Spanish names, and no reasonable basis for thinking that they might have existed. Even people who travelled extensively (who were not as rare as modern history would have us believe) didn't have names which were mixed in this way.

It is possible to construct a name that a person who has travelled from Ireland to Spain (or vice-versa) might have. If you could give us more information about your reasons for choosing this name, we would be happy to keep working with you to develop a name that the persona you have chosen could have had.

Heraldic style varied across places and times. Heraldry didn't exist at all until the mid- to late 12th century, and after that it developed in different ways. Despite the variations, there is a "standard style" that was found in almost every area of Europe where heraldry was used.

Your arms are fairly close to that standard style. We suggest that you change the "vert" in your arms to "azure," because "barry wavy argent and azure" was the standard heraldic representation of water-- anyone seeing that pattern would identify it immediately as water. We also suggest that you modify the form of your cross. Only a few crosses were commonly found in medieval heraldry--in addition to the standard "cross throughout," there are the cross patonce, cross flory, cross potent, cross crosslet/cross botonny, cross formy, and cross moline. We checked your arms with both vert and azure, and a variety of crosses, and found no conflicts with registered arms for either version. For a design that's consistent with standard heraldic style, we recommend that you use one of these (a heraldry book will have pictures of these crosses). Any of these could be made "fitchy," in which the bottom arm tapers to a point.

Talan Gwynek, Rouland Carre, Arval D'Espas Nord, Zenobia Naphtali, Walraven van Nijmege, Lindorm Eriksson, Tangwystl verch Morgant Glasvryn, and Pedro de Alcazar contributed to this letter.

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

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel