Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 316

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 316

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/316

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

Greetings,

Here's the information we found on revisions to your name and arms to make it consistent with 14th-century Scotland.

We appreciate your interest in an accurate name and arms, and your detailed description of your persona story. We had fun working on this letter.

We haven't found any examples of "Alianor" or any variants in Scotland at all. We agree that it's unlikely your family would have named you after Eleanor of Provence. You can find a list of Scottish women's names at

http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/scottishfem/

We looked at this list ourselves, and found various forms of "Ellen" and "Elisabeth" were used in your period

Elizabet 1329

We also found forms of "Isabel."

"Aeschine" appears to have fallen out of use in the late 13th century, and we don't recommend it as a name for your period.

"mac Lamont" is a Gaelic name, and if your father had it, he would definitely be a Gaelic-speaker. If this is your intention, then you wouldn't completely be a "lowlander," but more of a Gael who had settled in the lowlands (this was not uncommon). Scots-speaking nobles were generally known by the name of the land they held, so you would most likely be known as "Elayne de <place in Ayrshire>." In this case, it's quite possible that you would have spoken Gaelic.

If your father was a Scots-speaker, than you (and your father) would probably be known either by your father's old lands or his new ones. It's still possible that you could be related in some way to a Gaelic clan, but this relation wouldn't be reflected in your name. In this case, your persona may or may not have known some Gaelic.

We also recommend that you modify your arms. A "per saltire" design like yours was fairly common in Spain and Italy, but we didn't find any examples in Scotland. However, the saltire itself is fairly common. We don't have much 14th-century Scottish heraldry, but the examples we do have suggest a couple of possible designs:

Argent, a saltire between four roses purpure. Argent, a saltire and on a chief purpure three roses argent.

Both of these designs are consistent with the heraldry we found. We don't recommend wolves because they're almost a cliche in the SCA, but are pretty rare in actual medieval heraldry.

You could change the tinctures in any number of ways, and you might want to. "Purpure" was rare in early heraldry, and it was a sort of grey-brown color that's very different from either the light purple or the royal purple that we think of. "Purpure" didn't begin to look like modern purple until the 1400's. (1)

Talan Gwynek, Arval D'Espas Nord, Effric neyn Kenyeoch vc Ralte, Elsbeth Anne Ross, and Pedro de Alcazar 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) Pastoreau, Michel. "Traite D'Heraldique"