ANSTHRLD - Name Documentation

Kathleen O'Brien kobrien at bmc.com
Tue May 25 09:46:48 PDT 1999


At 11:02 PM 5/24/99 -0500, you wrote:
>On Mon, 24 May 1993, Doug Bell <debell at txcyber.com> wrote:
>> Since Crystal is a form of Christopher it is a masculine name.
>> Withycombe's reference dates the feminine use of the name as modern
>> related to such names as Ruby and other gem stones.
>>
>> Despite this the SCA has in the past registered Chrystal as a name
>> for either sex.
>
>Certainly the SCA CoA does not do chromosome checks, and it cares not
>for the real sex of the person.  In that sense either a man or woman
>may register it.
>
>I am not sure whether it could be used as a feminine name per se --
>for example, Crystal ingen Diarmuid, where in contect the forename
>must be the name of a person with big wabbly bits up *there* instead
>of little wabbly bits down *there*.

Per the following Laurel ruling:
[Cristall Madeleine Moore] While cross-gender names have long been allowed
in the SCA, mixed-gender names have not.  This has a masculine given with a
feminine given with a surname.
	Neither does it match any of the three kinds of double given name used in
England before the end of our period noted by Bardsley: those that had
already been used by English royalty, like Charles James; those that
commemorated the prior death of the child's father with second element
Posthumus/Posthuma (according to the sex of the bearer); and those with
second name Maria (for either sex) in the Continental fashion. (Da'ud ibn
Auda, LoAR May 1995, p. 16)

I would interpret this to mean that if you use a spelling of Crystal, then
the byname must be formed in a way that is compatible with a masculine
given name.

In other words, the construction in "Crystal mac Diarmuid" would be okay.
The construction in "Crystal ingen Diarmuid" would not be okay.   

So if your submitter wants to register Crystal and use it as female in her
SCA activities, then she needs to pick a non-specific construction like
Crystal Campbell or Crystal de Edinburgh or something like that.  It would
be viewed as a masculine name when it is submitted, but most folks in the
SCA will neither know nor care that Crystal was masculine only in period.
Heck, "Crystal MacLeod" would be a masculine name, but most folks in the
SCA wouldn't notice.  (Just remember to check the "doesn't care" box for
gender on the submission form!)

Mari




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