[Ansteorra] history of SCA placenames - wne / why the second "r"
Deborah May
auntdwen at sbcglobal.net
Tue Sep 26 21:50:41 PDT 2006
Of course, as Vicount Tiernon of Calontir pointed out, the good people of the Texas part of Ansteorra might not have missed the alternate "Lone Star" interpretation of "Unicus et Singularis..."
Blessings,
Ceridwen, Stirrer of Pots
----- Original Message ----
From: HerrDetlef at aol.com
To: ansteorra at lists.ansteorra.org
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 10:27:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Ansteorra] history of SCA placenames - wne / why the second "r"
Incidentally, the Old English phrase "an steorra" simply means "a star" or
"one star". "eo" is an Old English diphthong, and is pronounded as one vowel.
In Middle English the word "steorra" experienced the characteristic
inflection weakening, and the diphthong was replaced orthographically with the
similar sounding "e"...often becoming "sterre", then going into Modern English as
"starre"....but the loss of the inflectional ending resulted in the current
spelling of "star". "An steorra" is properly pronounced "ahn STAY oh rah" or
even "ahn STAIR ah", but the pronunciation of the kingdom's name seems to
have become set in stone. The primary stress seems to have been fixed on a
vowel that, in the Old English period, was the weak half of a dipthong. The
reference is to an entry in 1066 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where notice is
given to a star, "unique and singular" (think our motto "Unicus et
Singularis"), that portended the Norman invasion of England.
In a message dated 9/25/2006 9:47:26 PM Central Standard Time,
dontivar at gmail.com writes:
At 01:10 PM 9/25/2006, you wrote:
> >Jay Yeates jyeates at realtime.net
> >speaking of the history "placemenames" ... some of us silverbacks were
> >discussing the old days at our weeekly communal dinner yesterday, and a
> >question came up ... exactly when/why did the kingdom name get the second
> >"r" tacked onto it ????? our oldest documents (popular and official) that
> >we still hold use the origional spelling of "ansteora"
>
>I have been told that the change occured when the principality became a
>kingdom.
>
>(and I bet folks thought I just couldn't type :) )
>
>Marc/Diarmaid
The original name (when we first became a region of Atenveldt) was
Ansteorra. When Sir Sean became Prince, he decided to change the
spelling to Ansteora (and the name of the newsletter from "Black
Star" to "Sable Star".) Prince Randall changed it back to Ansteorra,
and there was a fair bit of joking that Prince Simonn would spell it
"Ansteorrra".
Just think, if we'd kept up that tradition we'd now live in
Ansteorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrra.
-Tivar Moondragon
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