ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2558 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2558 ************************************ 21 Jun 2002 From: Marianne Perdomo Machin Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You were interested in an authentic name and arms appropriate for a woman living in late 12th to early 13th century in the south of France. In particular you were interested in the name . is an excellent choice of elements for a 13th century Occitan name [1]. However we think that in this particular combination using would be more accurate. We thus recommend you use . This is pronounced \eh-LAY-nah dahl-VAIR-n~ah\ [2]. Regarding appropriate arms, you liked the heraldic design "Or, two bars azure". This design fits your culture very well; unfortunately, it is too similar to arms already registered with the SCA College of Arms [3]. Some designs that are similar and appropriate for your period are: Barry per pale or and azure. Or, a fess cotised azure. Or, two bars and in chief three roundels azure. Per pale azure and or, two bars counterchanged. Or, two bars gemmel azure [4]. We believe that you may register any of these designs with the SCA College of Arms. The roundels in the third example could be replaced by any other simple charge. We hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Galiana de Baiona, Iago ab Adam, Arval Benicoeur, Talan Gwynek and Aryanhwy merch Catmael. For the Academy, Leonor Martin 5 June 2002 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References: [1] Ramons lo Montalbes, "French/Occitan Names From The XII And XIII Century" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1997) http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/ramon/occitan/ s.nn. , . [2] For a Spanish speaker it might be easier to think of this as \e-le-na dal-ver-n~a'\, where \n~\ represents the letter n with a tilde on top, as in the Spanish . Note that the \v\ would be pronounced like modern v in English. Our pronunciation guides are usually based on American English, but as a Spanish speaker we thought you might find this clearer. [3] There is a conflict with the arms of Averill Messinger: Or, on two bars azure three doves two and one argent. [4] It's possible that this design may not be registerable due to conflict with the arms of Daveed of Granada: "Or, a pomegranate bendwise sinister inverted gules between two bars gemels azure" (registered in December of 1986,via Caid). If the pomegranate is considered as a primary charge, then the arms do not conflict. We think this is likely but can not say for sure without visually comparing both designs.