Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 759

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 759

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/759

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

Greetings,

Here is the information we found on <Osanna de Haukesworth>, which you wanted to use as an English name from between 1350 and 1550, and on your design for your arms.

Before we go into what we discovered, we want to emphasize that the Academy is an advisory group which does historical research. What you do with our findings is completely up to you. If you want to hold to a strict historical standard you will have to make some changes, but you're under no obligation to do so.

"Osanna de Haukesworth" is a historically accurate name for the period between 1250 and 1320, but not any later. "Osanna" is first recorded in 1279, but we don't have any examples of it after 1308, (1) and our best source agrees that it vanished shortly after 1300. (2) The place name <Hauekeswrth> is recorded in 1226, (3) and the spelling <Haukesworth> is found in 1379. (4) Similar names were usually spelled <Hauekes-> in the 13th century and <Haukes-> in the late 13th to 15th centuries.

<Osanna de Haukesworth> is a good name for an English woman from the 1200's, but the given name does not seem to have been used much after 1300. If you want a later persona, then we recommend choosing a different given name.

If you want to change the date of your persona to around 1300, you have a completely accurate name.

In heraldic blazon, your arms are "Per bend sinister purpure and azure, a comet bendwise argent and in dexter base a crescent Or."

Several elements of your arms are either unknown or rare in medieval heraldry, so we recommend some changes. Some of our recommendations depend on the period you choose, but there are some changes that we suggest no matter what your period is.

If you decide to go with a persona from around 1300, then we recommend that you drop either the comet or the crescent altogether--arms from this period almost never have two pictorial charges on them. A couple of good designs are

If you decide to go with a persona from around 1400, you could try:

As far as we can tell, you could register any of these designs with the SCA.

Arval Benicoeur, Lothar von Katzenellenbogen, Talan Gwynek, Margaret McDuibhsidhe, Elspeth Anne Roth, Livia Montgomery, William Maynard, Evan da Collaureo, Lindorm Eriksson, and Zenobia Naphtali 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

(1) Reaney, P. H., & R. M. Wilson, _A Dictionary of English Surnames_ (London: Routledge, 1991; Oxford University Press, 1995).

(2) Withycombe, E.G., _The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names_, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

(3) Ekwall, Eilert, _The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names_, 4th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

(4) Bardsley, Charles, A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1980).