[Ansteorra] SCA Vocabulary

[Chris Zakes]

At 03:45 AM 11/10/2007, you wrote:

>I have seen the phrases "feastocrat", "troll", and "dragon" quite commonly
>in my previous kingdom.  Dragon wasn't use too often; I always preferred
>horse or stead (I think that comes from the rennie side of me).  I can
>understand some people taking offense to the title of troll.  But is the
>title feastocrat considered bad here?  What do head chefs preferred to be
>called?
>
>I hope I haven't offended anyone!  ;-)
>
>Will Meriic


Probably not. This is actually a recurring subject for discussion. 
Story time, children!

While setting up the SCA's second event, Marion Zimmer Bradley (yes, 
the science fiction author) was filling out a form to reserve a park 
in San Francisco and one of the questions on the form was "Title." 
The first thing that popped into her head was "autocrat" so that's 
what she put down, and the name stuck. (One of the earlier questions 
on that form was "name of organization", and "Society for Creative 
Anachronism" was the first thing that popped into her head.)

Sicne then, tacking -ocrat onto any SCA-related job has become pretty common.

"Troll" was a pretty obvious pun on "toll", but that joke got old a 
*long* time ago.

About ten or fifteen years ago (at least in Ansteorra) people started 
pushing for more historically accurate names: event steward instead 
of autocrat, gate instead of troll, head cook or feast steward 
instead of feastocrat, privy instead of Shrine of St. John of the 
Swirling Waters, etc.

Nowadays some folks use the historically accurate names, some folks 
still use the "traditional" names. It's pretty much a matter of 
personal preference. If you look through the event announcements in 
the Kingdom Calendar http://calendar.ansteorra.org/ or Black Star, 
you'll see that both terms are used.

         -Tivar Moondragon