ANST - AOA/GOA etc courts - Brand new, help!

[Tim McDaniel]

In addition to my last note on mixed-languages names, I
wanted to add an addendum on "retro-documentation" and
choosing a name.

You Have Been Warned.

The amount of floundering I did in the other note shows the
problem with "retro-documentation" -- generating a name
according to your own likes (in this case, Lloyd's parents'
modern naming preferences) and then saying "Can anyone
justify this in any language, any time"?

It's the hardest job a consulting herald gets, it's usually
very frustrating, it usually fails, and even when it
"succeeds" it's usually highly unlikely in period terms,
because they probably didn't manage to hit upon period name
elements or construction.

As Cariadoc of the Bow put it in a related field:

> If you want to do a period recipe, surely it is easier to
> find one in a period cookbook, of which many have
> survived, than to find a modern recipe and then search
> through period cookbooks in the hope that somewhere you
> can find something similar. The whole procedure seems
> equivalent to finding a restaurant by picking an address
> at random, then searching through the yellow pages to see
> if, by any chance, there is a restaurant there.

A *far* easier approach, and one *far* more likely to get a
period-style name, is to choose a culture, a language, and
some time-period range to start looking at (Welsh, 12-15th
C., say).  Then see what name patterns they used there ("X
ap Y", say).  Then see what name elements they used,
concentrating on the common ones ("Ieuan ap Ifor", say), and
see if you like any names that come up.  This does take a
decent source and an experienced person handy, but #2 may
have #1, and they're not that uncommon, and there are people
willing to consult via e-mail -- e.g., the Academy of Saint
Gabriel, reachable via the Laurel Queen of Arms web page at
http://www.sca.org/heraldry.  With the prerequisites to
hand, you can have a drop-dead-gorgeous period-style name
quickly.

Then again, everyone cares about authenticity in varying
amounts in varying subjects.  For example, just this week I
got around to asking in what language my name would have
been written (in 12th C. England, in Latin) and about a
likely spelling.  (Daniel is the most frequent attested
spelling of the given, Talan Gwynek tells me, though
Danielis is found.  Domesday Book has a use of "de
Lincolia"; there's evidence for lots of other forms.)

Daniel de Lincolia
-- 
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com; if that fail, tmcd at austin.ibm.com
is work address.  tmcd at tmcd.austin.tx.us is wrong tool.  Never use this.

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