ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 919 http://www.s-gabriel.org/919 *********************************** ************************************************* * * * NOTE: Some of the Academy's early reports * * contain errors that we haven't yet * * corrected. Please use it with caution. * * * ************************************************* ************************************************* * * * NOTE: Later research turned up additional * * information relevant to this report. * * See the end of the letter for details. * * * ************************************************* From: "S Friedemann" 19 May 1998 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a German woman living between 1300 and 1550. You wanted to know until what time period was used, and said you were considering the towns of and . You also asked for comments on your proposed arms . Here is the information we have found. We found in 1383 [1]; it was a popular name in Germany throughout our period. Locative bynames (those based on place names) were very common in your period. There are two types, both of which were quite common. The first is like or ; examples are 1267 and 1304 [2]. The feminine form would be or, with the definite article, . The other type uses the unmodified place-name, with or without the preposition ; we found in 1342 [2]. We are not sure how the two types were distributed, but we think that the locatives with were more common among the nobility than among other groups. We find in various spellings in period: , , , and [2]. (The " represents an umlaut on the .) is a city in western Austria, first mentioned in history in 1180. [3] In your period, we found a number of spellings, of which and are fairly typical. [4] Any combination of these would be authentic for you, i.e., , , or . Your arms would be blazoned as Unfortunately, these arms resemble nothing in period German style that we have found. While fields divided between two colors were occasionally found, the low contrast between green and black makes this combination a poor choice. Overlapping charges, such as a swan overall, were quite rare in period armory, and there are almost no examples of one complex charge on top of another. We suggest that you consider a simpler device such as , (a green field with a yellow swan and crosses) , (a green field with many yellow crosses, and a white swan) , (a black field with three white swans) , (black field with white swan and three crosses at the top) , (black field with a dismembered yellow cross) Bordures are far more common in Society heraldry than they were in period, and they appear to be particularly unusual in German heraldry [5]. We recommend that you do not use a bordure in your arms unless you have a particularly strong reason to use it for your re-creation. You will notice that in the above ideas, we suggested using a cross moline rather than a cross moline disjointed. In our sources, this type of cross was only mentioned four times, and we found only one clear example, from 1603. [6] It is a very rare charge, and using a regular cross moline would be better recreation, and we suggest that you use that instead. We hope that this letter has been useful to you and that you will not hesitate to write again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Antonio Miguel Santos de Borja, Arval Benicoeur, Charles O'Connor, Elsbeth Anne Roth, Fergus Stout of Westgate, Margaret Makafee, Rafael van Antwerpen, Talan Gwynek, and Walraven van Nijmegen. For the Academy, Arianwy Prydyddes ferch Cadfael ------------------------------------------------ References: [1] Talan Gwynek, "Medieval German Given Names from Silesia." (WWW) http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/bahlow_v.htm [2] Brechenmacher, Josef Karlmann, _Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen familiennamen_ (Limburg a. d. Lahn, C. A. Starke-Verlag, 1957-1960), s.n. Bremen. [3] "Innsbruck" Britannica Online. [Accessed 21 April 1998]. http://www.eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/291/34.html [4] Kommission fuer Mundartkunde und Namenforschung (Isolde Hausner and Elisabeth Schuster, eds.), _Altdeutsches Namenbuch: Die Ueberlieferung der Ortsnamen in Oesterreich und Sudtirol von den Anfaengen bis 1200, vol. 8_, Verlag der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien 1989. [5] Da'ud ibn Auda, "The Use of Bordures in Non-SCA Heraldry: A Statistical Survey", Known World Heraldic Symposium, Rochester, NY, June 20-22, 1997. [6] Parker, James, _A Glossary of Terms used in Heraldry_ (Charles E. Tuttle, 1982). ------------------------- Annotation by Aryanhwy, 06 Jan 2009: Added header name to [2].