|
Greetings,
Here's the information we found on your proposed Scottish Gaelic name.
"Christopher" is not a Scottish Gaelic name. Various forms of "Christopher" are found in Scots, the earliest in 1296, but they were not carried into Scottish Gaelic. There is a Scottish Gaelic name "Gillacrist" which was fairly common. We would recommend using that instead. It was Latinized as "Gillecristus" or "Christianus."
"Philip" was introduced to Scotland by the Normans. We don't have any examples of "Philip" in Scottish Gaelic from your period, but it's possible that it was used. We found the name in a 1467 manuscript, where it's spelled as "Filip" and "Philip."
The Gaelic form of your name would be "Gillacrist mac Fhilip." The "h" is added for grammatical reasons. "Fh" is silent, so "Fhilip" is pronounced "Ilip." The Latin form would be "Gillecristus (or Christianus) filius Philippi."
The arms you've designed are blazoned as follows:
1st & 4th quarters: Bendy sinister vert and gules. 2nd quarter: Gules, on a lozenge sable, a goblet within a bordure Or. 3rd quarter: Vert, a Latin cross argent within a bordure Or.
Quartered arms are a way of showing the inheritance of multiple coats of arms. Quartering is a standard modern practice, although it wasn't found in the British Isles until the 14th century.
If a person had the right to bear multipe coats of arms, they would display each set in two quarters (traditionally, the more important arms are displayed in the dexter chief and sinister base). Any number of coats can be displayed by dividing the shield into smaller pieces. Thus, your design shows that you have inherited three seperate coats of arms.
Using quartered arms implies that you have inherited the right to multiple coats of arms. One of the basic rules of the Society is that we only claim rank that we have earned in the Society itself--you can't claim arms by inheritance unless you've actually inherited arms within the SCA. Therefore, the Society discourages the use of quartered arms by new members, and the College of Arms will not register them.
You could modify any one of your designs to make a reasonable 12th-century coat of arms.
"Bendy sinister vert and gules" divides the field into many parts and uses a pair of relatively low contrast tinctures. In period armory, multiply-divided fields almost always used high contrast tinctures, like white and red or yellow and black. If you replaced the green or red in this design with white or yellow, you would have an excellent coat of arms from your period.
"Gules, on a lozenge sable, a goblet within a bordure Or" is another good starting point. Societyfolk often use a lozenge (diamonds) or some other geometric shape as a "frames" for a central charge. That sort of design is pleasing to modern sensibilities, but is almost unknown in period heraldry. It you remove the lozenge and place the goblet directly on the field, you would have a fine piece of armory, "Gules, a goblet within a bordure Or". This design is too similar to a number of existing SCA coats of arms, but if you like it, we can suggest some variants that are free of conflict.
"Vert, a Latin cross argent within a bordure Or", once again, is very close to the medieval style of armory, but has a small flaw: The Latin cross was not used in your period. Only a few types of cross were common found in medieval heraldry: the standard "cross throughout", the cross patoncécross flory, cross potent, cross crosslet/cross botonny, cross formy, and cross moline. For a design that's consistent with standard heraldic style, we recommend that you use one of these. Almost any heraldic text will have pictures of these crosses, and you can find pictures of all of them at
http://www.web-span.com/lemke/crosses/crosses.htm
Any of these could be made "fitchy," in which the bottom arm tapers to a point.
Arval Benicoeur, Talan Gwynek, Zenobia Naphtali, Margaret Makafee, Pedro de Alcazar, Effric neyn Kenyeoch vc Ralte, and Rouland Carre 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