Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 409

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 409

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/409

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

Greetings,

Here are the comments we got on your name "Donwenna Hawkseye the Beast Healer" and your proposed arms, which incorporate a horse and white stars.

"Donwenna" is a Latinized form of the Welsh name "Dwynwen." In English, it would probably be "Donwen." (1) Most likely, your persona would have been called "Donwenna" in Latin documents, and called "Donwen" in daily life.

"Beast Healer" isn't found anywhere in the Middle Ages as a term for people who care for sick animals. The medieval word we found for this is the Anglo-French "Mareschal," a term applied to people who cared for horses, especially those who treated their diseases.

"Hawkseye" is a medieval place-name in Lancashire, in northern England. The etymology isn't clear, but it most likely means "Hawk's wood" or "Hawk's enclosure" (in these names, "Hawk" refers to the name of a person and not the bird). We found no evidence that "seye" means "stable."

Theoretically, these elements could be combined to make "Donwen(na) le Mareschal de Hawkseye." However, since the actual village of Hawkseye is nowhere near Wales, it's highly unlikely that that a person with a Welsh name would be associated with it. Also, names with two elements are much more common than three-element names in your period. Thus, we recommend dropping "Hawkseye" altogether and using "Donwen(na) le Mareschal."

Regarding your arms, we had many ideas, both on general principles and specific ideas.

Arms are intended to be used for many generations and by many people. Your arms are likely to outlive you, your horse, and your clothing. Therefore, we encourage a more abstract form of symbolism. A horse is an excellent heraldic charge, but a specific horse is not. If you want use black with white stars, we recommend using it as the background of your arms.

All this produces the arms "Sable mullety argent, a horse Or." This is a gold horse on a black background that's sprinkled with white stars.

So to summarize: we recommend the name "Donwen(na) la Mareschal" and the arms "Sable mullety argent, a horse passant Or." We found no conflicts between this and any registered SCA arms.

Rouland Carre, Talan Gwynek, Arval Benicoeur, Zenobia Naphtali, Madawc, Margaret MacDuibhsidhe, and Elsbeth Anne Ross 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