ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2814 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2814 ************************************ From: "C. L. Ward" 12 Jun 2004 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for help in constructing a name appropriate for Dalecarlia, Sweden, ca. 1150-1250 CE, using or as the given name, as the father's name, and a byname meaning something like "cat-friend", perhaps . You also asked for help in designing arms. Here is what we found. Throughout this letter, we'll use some special notation for letters that we can't easily include here. The slash following a vowel represents an acute accent mark on the preceding vowel. The {TH} represents the letter 'thorn', which resembles a lower-case p overlapping a lower-case b, so that they share a single loop. The notation {dh} represents the letter 'edh', which looks like a backward 6 with a crossbar on the riser, while {o,} represents the Icelandic o-ogonek, an 'o' with a backward-comma-shaped hook hanging from the bottom. The character {o"} represents an o-umlaut (an 'o' with two dots over it), while {a"} is an a-umlaut (an 'a' with two dots over it). The name appears once in a runic inscription from So"dermanland, Sweden [1]. This name is pronounced \GU"N-n@\, where the \G\ is the hard, voiced sound of the in English . The \U"\ is the sound of u-umlaut as in German "to fill". To make this vowel, position your tongue to say \ih\, the vowel of , but simultaneously round and purse your lips as if you were saying \oo\ (as in ); this sound is not found in English. The \@\ is the sound spelled in . The name is a pet form of the feminine name , and appears once in a runic inscription from So"dermanland, Sweden [1, 2, 3, 4]. We also found one instance of the name in a metronymic, , in 1324 [5]. This name would be pronounced \GIN-n@\. Old Norse has a few words for 'cat': 'cat' 'female cat' 'puss', a pet name for a cat 'puss', a pet name for a cat (the masculine form) [6, 7, 8]. Terms related to "cat" appear in the following bynames: 'cat' 'cat from Fjalir' 'wild-cat; cat who lives among the rocks' 'she-cat's back' (1220s) 'puss, kitty (masculine)' 'cat's-speech' (second half of the 14th c.) [7]. Your proposed byname of would mean 'female puss's female friend'. Although it is a correctly formed Old Norse word, it doesn't fit the patterns of byname formation that we see in period sources. In particular, we haven't found 'female friend' or even the more common 'friend' as a byname or an element of a byname. We would expect a woman noted for her cats to be given a simple byname like or [7]. We have found only a few examples of : Vi{dh}aR Rolfs son (undated but early) [9] Valgerdr Vidars do/ttir (10th c.) Eyio/lfr & So,xo/lfr Vi{dh}ars synir ('Vi{dh}ar's sons', 10th c.) Vi{dh}arr {TH}orgeirs son (d. ca.1161) [10, 11]. The name was more common in Norway. A runic example exists from c.1200, and Roman alphabet examples occur in 1289, 1301, and several more times in the 14th century [9, 10]. This name would be pronounced roughly \WEE-dhar\ in your period [12]. The \dh\ is the voiced \th\, the sound of in , and , but not in , , and . Finally, the \r\ was trilled, as in Spanish or Italian. We have not found in Swedish or Danish sources. By your period there were already fairly pronounced differences between the dialects of Iceland and Norway, on the one hand, and those of Sweden and Denmark on the other. There were also differences in the name pools. The fact that we have not found in Swedish or Danish sources suggests that it was seldom if ever used in eastern Scandinavia. We can't rule it out, but if it was used, it was certainly a rare name there. "Ginna cat Vi{dh}ar's daughter" is a fairly good choice for Norway or Iceland, but the evidence doesn't support it as well as a Swedish name. In the 12th to 13th centuries, Swedish names were written either in runes or in Roman letters. Once you have selected your name, if you'd like more information on how to write it in runes, we'll be happy to work out suitable runic spellings. With regard to your proposed armory, as you know, heraldic arms began appearing in several parts of Western Europe in the early to mid-12th century. Armory was developed most rapidly in Anglo-Norman England and in the region between the Loire and the Rhine rivers, and it reached Scandinavia by the late 13th century, just after your period [13, 14]. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use arms in the Society: Many Societyfolk use arms even though their personas would not have done so. Whether you use arms or not depends on how you think about authenticity and your persona. You can find a few thoughts on this issue in an article we've posted on the web: What Do I Use for Arms if my Persona Wouldn't Have Used Arms? http://www.s-gabriel.org/faq/nonheraldic.html You asked for help in designing arms using a domestic cat, a periwinkle or cinquefoil proper, and the color vert, and asked specifically about arms such as "Argent, a pile argent fimbriated vert between two periwinkle flowers proper, and charged with a cat couchant/tergiant guardant/regardant guardant sable, orbed Or." Several elements of this design do not fit any medieval heraldic style that we've studied. In general, your design is simply too complex: Most period heraldry was quite simple. Beyond that, there are several specific problems with your design that we will address below. After reviewing this information, if you would like our help in designing arms that fit the earliest style of heraldry used in Scandinavia, please write us again. Domestic cats were very rare in heraldry prior to the 16th century. We did find one example of arms from Germany from 1486 including a cat: "Gules, a cat rampant argent" [15]. We can't be sure that the charge was a domestic cat rather than a wildcat. We also found a device that we would blazon as "Azure, a cat argent", attributed by one source to a family and by another source to a family [16, 17]. Note that this is an example of "canting", or pictorially referring to a surname or family name in armorial design, which was a common practice in medieval heraldry. Most of the examples we've seen of cats in period arms are canting. You are correct that "tergiant" is a poor choice for the position of the cat. "Rampant" is by far the most common posture for heraldic felines, and one of the most common postures for medieval heraldic beasts [18]. Instead of thinking of tergiant as a "back view", consider it a view of an animal or insect that creeps with its belly to the ground, viewed from the top. Couchant was also an uncommon position for cats in medieval armory; most are either rampant or passant. Naturalistic plants are also very rare in period heraldry. Your alternate suggestion of using a cinquefoil to represent a "periwinkle proper" would require the cinquefoil to be blazoned as "purpure," purple. Until the beginning of the 15th century the tincture called in Old French and in Latin seems to have been an indistinct color somewhere between grey and brown. It was only in the 15th century that it began to be painted as what we would call purple, and it remained rare in heraldry right through the 16th century [19]. Your design as blazoned places a white (or silver) pile on a white field separated by green fimbriation. Fimbriation is extremely rare in period heraldry, though it is occasionally found in very simple designs. Piles in the medieval period developed as a variant of the pale, a vertical band approximately one-third the width of the shield. When they were charged at all, it was typically with small charges such as mullets (stars) or fleurs-de-lis. It wasn't until the reign of Henry VIII that piles began to be drawn large enough to accommodate a charge as complex as a cat [20]. The color vert is one of the less common tinctures in medieval heraldry. For tincture preferences we can look to an extensive survey of European armorials from the 13th - 15th centuries [21]. This survey shows the frequency of the different tinctures and pairs of tinctures in armory from different parts of Europe; it also gives average figures for the entire collection. Here are the figures for usage of individual tinctures in Scandinavian and, for the sake of comparison, in all European armory surveyed; the numbers are the percentage of coats using a given tincture. For instance, almost two-thirds of the Scandinavian coats use argent, compared with only 48% of all of the coats surveyed. Tincture Scand. Europe -------------------------------- Argent (white): 66 48 Gules (red): 43 61 Azure (blue): 34 23 Or (gold): 32 42 Sable (black): 25 28 Vert (green): 2 2 Furs: 1 5 Barring minor details like lion's claws, most early coats use only two tinctures, a metal (argent, or) and a color (gules, azure, sable, vert). Here is a similar comparison of Scandinavian and general European preferences: Tinctures Scand. Europe -------------------------------- argent & gules: 35 27 argent & azure: 18 10 or & azure: 15 10 argent & sable: 14 13 or & sable: 9 11 or & gules: 8 20 argent & vert: 1 1 other: - 8 As you can see, argent (white) is much the most common tincture in Scandinavian armory; it is usually combined with gules (red), though combinations with azure (blue) or sable (black) are also quite common. Or and azure (gold and blue) is also quite common. Some charges found in early Scandinavian armory include: fleurs-de-lis; roses with five or six petals; ships and boats; towers and castles; axes; swords, often held by human arms; mullets (stars), often with six points but sometimes with five or eight; birds, especially eagles; arrowheads; and various animals and parts of animals. The fleur-de-lis is especially common, though it's often reduced to just the left or right half of a fleur-de-lis that's been sliced vertically down the middle; this kind of demi-fleur-de-lis is very characteristic of Scandinavian armory and very unusual elsewhere. It's much harder to make non-trivial generalizations about armorial design. We can say that in a large majority of coats the field was painted a single color and not divided into two parts. In the earliest Scandinavian armory available to us there are more examples of fields divided 'per pale' (vertically down the centre of the shield) than of fields divided 'per fess' (horizontally across the centre of the shield), but there are very few of either type. In hopes of giving some more general idea of early Scandinavian armory, we've included blazons of the 21 Norwegian seals in [14] that are dated no later than 1300, and for good measure of another ten from the very early 14th century [22]. These descriptions will unfortunately be rather cryptic if you're not familiar with the technical language used by heralds to describe armory, but they should be interpretable by anyone familiar with that language, and we'll be happy to try to answer questions about them. While these examples are from Norway, they should be very similar stylistically to heraldry being used in Sweden during this period. I 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 Talan Gwynek, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Arval Benicoeur, Adelaide de Beaumont, Juliana de Luna, Jillian Saint Andre and Elsbeth Anne Roth. For the Academy, Gunnvor silfraharr 9 June 2004 ----------------------------------------------------- References [1] Peterson, Lena, "Nordiskt runnamnslexikon" (WWW: Institute for Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research, 2001) http://www.dal.lu.se/runlex/index.htm S.nn. , . The inscriptions cited are So"196 (Kolsundet, Selao"n, So"dermanland, Sweden, http://w1.581.telia.com/~u58110628/so196kolsund.html) and So"250 (O"smo, Jursta, So"dermanland, Sweden, http://www.nynashamn.se/pagedownload/V%E4lkommen+till+Nyn%E4shamn/Kommunen/M ilj%F6-+och+samh%E4llsbyggnad/Fysisk+samh%E4llsplanering/Kulturmilj%F6progra m/Kulturmilj%F6v%E5rd/Jursta.pdf and http://w1.838.telia.com/~u83805616/so250.html). [2] The etymology of the first element is uncertain; there are Continental Germanic names in that may contain the same element, and it may actually be related to the Old Norse verb , 'to dupe, to fool; to decoy, to entice'. [3] Morlet, Marie-Therese, _Les Noms de Personne sur le Territoire de l'Ancienne Gaule du VIe au XIIe Siecle_, three volumes (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1972). S.v. [4] Cleasby, Richard and Gudbrandr Vigfusson. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957). P. 200 s.v. . [5] _Sveriges Medeltida Personnamn_, Vol. 1- (Uppsala: 1967-. bd. 1, h. 3: isbn: 91-7192-123-8; bd. 1, h. 4: isbn: 91-7192-223-7; bd. 1, h. 5: isbn: 91-7402-044-7; bd. 2, h. 6: isbn: 91-7402-104-4; bd. 2, h. 7: isbn: 91-7402-136-2, h. 8: isbn: 91-7402-115-x; bd. 2, h. 9: isbn: 91-88096-00-9; bd. 2, h. 10: isbn: 91-88096-01-7; Bloms Boktryckeri AB: Lund 1983 bd. 2). S.n. [6] Cleasby, Richard and Gudbrandr Vigfusson. An Icelandic-English Dictionary. 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957). P. 338 s.v. , p. 339 s.v. , p. 368 s.v. . [7] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Personbinamn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala: 1920-21). S.vv. , , , , . The notation {a*} represents an a-ring, the letter a with a small circle at the top. [8] De Vries, Jan, _Altnordisches Etymologisches Wo"rterbuch_, 2nd edn. (Boston: Brill, 2000). S.v. . [9] Gordon, Eric V. An Introduction to Old Norse. 2nd. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986). P. lxii. is an Icelandic manuscript form in which the at the end of is a small upper-case letter, used by Icelandic scribes to indicate that the letter was doubled, indicating the name . [10] Lind, E.H., _Norsk-Isla"ndska Dopnamn ock Fingerade Namn fra*n Medeltiden_ (Uppsala & Leipzig: 1905-1915, sup. Oslo, Uppsala and Kobenhavn: 1931). S.n. . [11] Kruken, Kristoffer, ed. _Norsk personnamnleksikon_, 2nd ed. (Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget, 1995). s.n. . [12] The initial consonant of was originally pronounced \w\, as in English , but by the 14th century or so the pronunciation had shifted to \v\, as in English . It's likely that on the way from \w\ to \v\ the pronunciation passed through the sound spelled in Spanish 'wolf' and in Spanish 'grape'. This sound, which does not occur in English, is made by positioning your lips to say a \b\ sound but relaxing them slightly so that the air escapes between them with a sort of buzzing sound; we'll represent it by the symbol \bh\. While no one knows the exact history of these sound changes, we think it likely that by your period was actually pronounced \BHEE-dhar\ rather than \WEE-dhar\. \WEE-dhar\ is a decent first approximation, but \BHEE-dhar\ is probably more accurate. By the end of your period the name may even have become \VEE-dhar\ for at least some speakers. [13] Pastoureau, Michel. Traite/ d'He/raldique, 2nd ed. (Paris: grands manuels Picard, 1993); p. 300. [14] Huitfeldt-Kaas, H.J. Norske Sigiller fra Middelalderen. 3rd and 4th parts (Kristiana: Aktie-Bogtrykkeriet, 1902); pp. 1-4, Pls. 1-2. [15] "A Collection of Period German Heraldry (1400-1600) for SCA Heralds," from Jurgen Arndt, ed., Wappenbucher des Mittlealters Vol. 1, Das Wappenbuch des Reichsherolds Caspar Sturm (WWW: Academy of Saint Gabriel, 2001, author unknown). http://www.s-gabriel.org/docs/sturm.html [16] Armorial Ge/ne/ral, Vol. I, s.n. Katzen ff. J. B. Rietstap. Clearfield Company, 1998. [17] Appuhn, Horst, ed. Johann Siebmachers Wappenbuch von 1605 (Dortmund: Harenberg, 1994). [18] Chesshyre, Hubert & Woodcock, Thomas, _Dictionary of British Arms: Medieval Ordinary_, vol. I (London: The Society of Antiquaries of London, 1992). [19] Pastoureau, op. cit., pp. 101-2. [20] Pye, Roger F., "A Return to First Principles: I--The Pile", Coat of Arms Vol. VII #49, pp. 4-6, January 1962. Henry VIII granted his third wife Jane Seymour a coat with the arms of England (Gules, three lions passant in pale Or) on a pile between six fleurs-de-lis. [21] Pastoureau, op. cit., Tables III and IV, pp. 117-9. [22] Seals from [14] dated 1300 or earlier: * A bear rampant. * A griffin segreant contourny holding a bird in its forefoot. * In pale a helm ensigned with a cross and sustained by a pair of arms issuing from the corners of the shield and a 'plantezirat'. (The 'plantezirat' looks like an unusually stylized fleur-de-lis.) * In chief between two axes in saltire a fleur-de-lis. * A bend within a bordure engrailed. * In pale a crown and a fleur-de-lis. * Issuing from a heart a cross. * In pall a rose between three castles triple-towered. (This is a single group of four charges of equal weight.) * Rising behind a dragon-prowed ship sailing on waves of the sea a tower. * Per pale a dexter demi-fleur-de-lis issuant from the line of division and a rose. (The seal has deteriorated to much to tell whether it has 5 or 6 petals.) * An arm issuant from sinister sustaining a sword piercing a boat, its tip between two six-petalled roses. * On a chevron throughout between a dexter demi-fleur-de-lis bendwise sinister and a sinister demi-fleur-de-lis bendwise each issuant therefrom seven asterisks and in base a fleur-de-lis. (The asterisks probably represent mullets of 8 points, but they may be flowers of some kind.) * A stalk with leaves issuant from base between two birds close regardant addorsed. * A sword between two roses slipped and leaved. * A six-petalled rose. * A single-masted ship with a high stem. * A fleur-de-lis dimidiating an bird and in dexter chief a rose. (The bird is probably an eagle.) * A fleur-de-lis within a chevron inverted throughout issuant from the corners. * A winged broadarrow head fesswise point to sinister. * A stag's massacre. * A ram's head cabossed. Some early 14th century seals from [14]: * Per pale, paly of four mullety and a sinister demi-fleur-de-lis issuant from the line of division. * An eagle dimidiating bendy alternately charged with roses and fleurs-de-lis palewise. * Gyronny arrondy. * On a fess a fleur-de-lis between two roses. * Three legs conjoined in pall. * Paly wavy of four. * A stag rampant. * A tower charged with five roses in saltire. * A sword sustained by an arm issuant from sinister. * A sword sustained by an arm issuant from sinister between in chief two mullets of eight points.