Name and Armory Cliches

	by Tadgh Liath of Duncairn
	annotated by Lothar von Katzenellenbogen

	Once upon a time, Master Tadgh Liath of Duncairn published a list of SCA heraldic cliches in the
Ansteorran Herald's Gazette. Eventually this list made it to the Internet, where I grabbed it and annotated
it. It's a nice summary of all the horrible crap that commenting and consulting heralds have to put up with.
If you want a medieval style name or device, avoid the following SCA cliches. Text in italics is my own.
Everything else is Master Tadgh's. 

Name Cliches

#1: Gratuitous substitution of "y" for "i".

#2: Gratuitous addition of a nonfunctional "e" at the end of a name element.

#3: Use of a by-name ending in "-bane", an element never (so far as I am aware) ever demonstrated to have
been used as such in period. 

#4: A gratuitous Celtic name element thrown into an otherwise
 non-Celtic name. (Extra credit if the
documentation for the name documents the language of the name only as being "Celtic.")

Tangwystyl covered the ground pretty thoroughly with her Top Ten Welsh Name Peeves List.


Armory Cliches

#1: Gratuitous (extra credit for bat) wings.

#1A: Gratuitous fish tail to make it a Sea-whatever.

#2: Two unlikely things (extra credit for as dissimilar as possible) crossed in saltire (extra credit for
every order of magnitude by which the normal size of one exceeds the normal size of the other, e.g., a
windmill and a stalk of wheat).

#2A: Extra credit if you cross them in cross or you have an
 arrangement of more than two long skinny
objects arranged in cross or
 saltire. For that matter, two identical objects in cross or saltire is a
cliche and is correspondingly rare in Period heraldry

#3: Overlying a line of division with a corresponding ordinary.

#3A: Extra credit if you use purpure, vert, or one of the odd furs for at least one part of the field.

#4: A beast or, better yet, a monster holding a drinking vessel, preferably foaming (extra credit for
distilling gouttes, doesn't matter which kind).

#4A: A beast or monster holding any charge that relates to some sort of recreational activity or craft,
like a needle, mallet, or harp (extra credit for each order of magnitude of difference in size normally
found between the two charges, like a whale maintaining a needle).

#5: My Life On My Shield; or, "I can't barcode my Social Security Number on my device, but I'll try to
identify myself unmistakably nevertheless ..."

#5A: Extra credit if the field is parted so that each "merit badge" is on a different tinctured portion of
the field.

#5B: Extra credit if a symbol allusive to an SCA office or home barony is on the device.

#6: Unlikely critter (extra credit for totally innocuous herbivore) brandishing a weapon (extra credit for
every order of magnitude by which the normal size of the weapon exceeds the normal size of the critter).


#6A: Unlikely critter in an odd posture or mutated in some way, like a three-eared rabbit, or a frog
rampant guardant (extra credit if the posture is impossible for the creature to achieve in nature). 

#6B: The creature appears in its natural colors.

#7: Gratuitous use of a sword, axe, mullet, hammer, cat, wolf, bear, or rose in your device. (Extra credit
if you use a weird variant of any of the above charges, like a compass star, a flamberge, a natural tabby
cat, or a panda).

#8: Gratuitous use of odd field tinctures or field treatments such as Purpure, Vert, Pean, Erminois,
Counter-Ermine, Plumetty, Masoned, Maily, or Honeycombed (Extra credit if
 you use more than one in the same
device). 

#9: Name and device where the device is a cant on the forename (Extra credit if it's a cat for Katherine, a
Bear for Bjorn, or a Wolf for Wulf. Extra extra credit if the name and the arms have no temporal connection
to each other, like a Migration Era Germanic name with Tudor-style arms).

#10: A mullet (extra credit if a compass star), roundel, or other geometric shape charged with a complex
charge.

#11: A peripheral charge (extra credit if it's charged and/or uses a complex line of division).

#12: Use of a line of division not typically found in medieval heraldry, like dovetailed or rayonee (extra
credit if you counterchange a primary charge across a complex line of division).

#13: Use of any charge found only in the Pic Dic or Parker's Dictionary (extra credit if it's a made-up
charge that had only one example before Bruce and Yoshio put the damned charge in the Pic Dic).

#14: Knotwork (extra credit if it's knotwork masquerading as an "orle of ivy" or "seme of vines"). 

#15: Semes (extra credit if they're semes of obscure charges, more extra credit if the seme charges
themselves follow SCA cliches, e.g., seme of compass stars.)

#16: Use of a non-European beast, artistic motif, or artifact in an otherwise European style device. (e.g.,
"Purpure, on a compass star Or between three torii erminois a racoon sejant affronty proper maintaining a
kris sable gorged of a chain Or and crowned with a baronial coronet all within an orle of ivy argent."
Gak!) 

Buzzwords
#1: "Artistic License"
#2: "Just Internal Diapering"
#3: "Alternate blazon"
#4: "SCA-Compatible"
#5: "Viking"
#6: "Celtic"
#7: "Mundane Name Allowance"