Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 350

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 350

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/350

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 put together for you.

It looks like there's not much we can do about "Brianna." Even though it's a fairly common SCA name, we can't find any examples for it. The CoA once thought that Brianna could be a feminine form of Brian--there are plenty of other names which change from male to female in this way. But more research has shown that Celtic names (like Brian) weren't changed in this way, so there's no way that "Brianna" could have been formed.

We talked about alternate names, and the best one we could come up with was "Anna." We didn't find any women's names starting with "Br-," but "Anna" is a common women's name for a good part of our period, including late period.

We have much better news about your persona's options. Many people posted to say that you have a lot more options than you think; I've summarized what they said. We assumed that you were interested in a late-period persona, although much of what we came up with applies to other periods as well.

You might be interested in being a young widow. It wasn't at all uncommon for young women to marry older men, and these women inherited their husband's property. As such, they often had significant property and power. A woman of your age could be a significant landowner or an artisan of note--given your interests, you could be a scrivener or a musician (although musicians had lower status). It wouldn't be all that unusual for you to be single; women of the artisan class were frequently unmarried until well into their 20's.

You wouldn't be an "old woman" at 26 either. Although the average life expectancy for a medieval person was low, the average takes into account the many people who died as children or infants. Although old people were rarer than they are today, most people at least knew old people.

If you have a late-period English persona, your name probably wouldn't sound out of place in the modern world. Between 1350 and 1450, most people in England started using inherited surnames which were passed on just as ours are--in fact, most of them are still used today. A lateperiod person was no more likely to have a name based on what they did than we are today.

Effric neyn Kenyeoch vc Ralte, Tangwystl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Alison MacDermot, Evan da Collaureo, Lindorm Eriksson, and Arval D'Espas Nord contributed to this letter.

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

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel