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Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel!
You said that you had documented <Gresh> as a Swedish name and asked how best to document <Gresh the Turtur>, where <Turtur> is from the Latin for 'turtle'.
The purpose of the Academy is to give advice on historically correct names and arms. It is sometimes posible to register non-historical names with the College of Arms, but we will concentrate on how to make your name as historically accurate as we can.
We are curious about your documentation for <Gresh>, since we were unable to find any evidence for it as a given name. We did find some relatively late forms of <Gregers>, a Swedish name derived from Latin <Gregorius> that are somewhat similar: [6]
Grees 1419
Gress 1458
Greis 1465
Greess 1510
Gresk 1506 (marked by the editor as an unusual form)
This source is quite comprehensive; if <Gresh> is also attested, it must have been a very rare form and is therefore probably authentic only for a particular time and place. A suitable byname would have to be compatible with the same time and place.
We wonder whether you are aware that Latin <turtur> actually means 'turtle-dove'. This is also the original meaning of the English word <turtle>, which wasn't applied to the shelled reptile until the 17th century. [3] In Latin and the Scandinavian languages the words for the reptile are completely different from the words for the bird. We'll discuss both possibilities.
Words for animals and birds are a common form of Swedish byname, but they generally refer to native Swedish fauna. The turtle (reptile) is not native to Sweden, and we've found no byname referring to it. In fact, the earliest example that we've found of <sko:ldpadda>, the Swedish word for 'turtle' (literally 'shield-toad'), is in some early 16th century writings on natural history, where it appears as <sko:lpaddo>. [4] (The symbol <o:> stands for o-umlaut, an <o> with two dots over it.) It is extremely unlikely that any Swede would have had a byname with this meaning.
The turtle-dove is also not native to Scandinavia. Words for it are found in the Scandinavian languages by the 14th century, but this is because it appears in the Bible and other religious texts (e.g., The Song of Solomon, 2:12, 'the voice of the turtle is heard in our land'). Like the reptile, therefore, it is not likely to have been the source of a Swedish byname. Moreover, the Swedish word, like English <turtle-dove>, is a compound: <turturduva> in modern Swedish, in period sources more often <turtur duwa>. [5] The fact that compound animal names were usually not used to form Swedish bynames further decreases the likelihood that <turtur duwa> would have been so used. Latin <turtur> would have been used only as a Latinization of an existing Swedish byname, so it is equally unlikely.
Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian all had bynames meaning simply 'dove', however. [1, 2, 5] It appears in Swedish and Danish as <duwa> in the 14th century; the modern form is <duva>. <Gress Duwa> would be an authentic mid-15th century Swedish name. It's even possible that this might have appeared in a Latinized form, but that form would have used the Latin for 'dove', not 'turtle-dove', and would probably have Latinized the given name as well, making <Gregorius Columba>.
To summarize, we were unable to confirm <Gresh> as a given name, Swedish or otherwise, though we found some similar Swedish names from the 15th and early 16th centuries. We found no evidence for Scandinavian bynames meaning either 'turtle' (the reptile) or 'turtle-dove'. Latin bynames occasionally appear in the records, but they are the result of translating native Scandinavian bynames. Since there seems to have been no native byname meaning 'turtle-dove', it is highly unlikely that Latin <turtur> would have been used as a byname at all. The simpler <duwa> 'dove', however, was used as a byname.
Lindorm Eriksson, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, and Arval Benicoeur also contributed to this letter. We hope that it has been of use. If you have further questions or would like us to clarify any of this information, please don't hesitate to write us.
For the Academy,
Talan Gwynek
[1] _Danmarks Gamle Personnavne_, Vol. I: Fornavne (Copenhagen: 1936-40).
[2] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla:ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala: 1920-21). [Here and in reference [5] <a*> stands for an <a> with a small circle directly over it.]
[3] _The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary_ (New
[4] 'Peder Manssons skrifter pa svenska; efter handskrifter i Stockholm, Uppsala och Linkoping med en inledning utgifna af Robert Geete. Med en plansch och manga i texten tryckta figurer, allt i faksimil och originalens storlek', Samlingar utgifna af Svenska fornskrift-sallskapet (Stockholm: 1913-15).
[5] So:derwall, K. F., _Ordbok o:fver Svenska Medeltidsspra*ket_ (Lund 1884-1918, sup. Lund 1925-1973).
[6] _Sveriges Medeltida Personnamn_ (Uppsala: 1967-95).