ANSTHRLD - Name Documentation

Kathleen O'Brien kobrien at bmc.com
Tue May 25 11:03:40 PDT 1999


>> >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. (Da'ud ibn
>> Auda, LoAR May 1995, p. 16)
>
>The precedent looks clear, but I'm not entirely convinced of the
>logic.  Since there are examples of male names being used by women in
>English contexts, I'm not entirely sure that we can ever really call
>an English given name a "male name".

My copy of Withycombe is at home, so I don't have the quotation at hand.
However, there are 2 issues here: (1) the practice in England of
occasionally using masculine names for female children and (2) crossing
names over between straight English and Scots (not Scottish Gaelic - Scots
is closely related to English, but is not exactly the same).  

(1) The practice of using masculine given names for female children occured
occasionally in England.  In Scotland I would call it vanishingly rare to
non-existant.  And (if I remember Withycombe correctly, put together with
my own research) this practice only occurred with any frequency in a
limited number of names.  I'll have to go back and look.  "Julian",
"Johan", and "Francis" are the only names that leap to mind.  

At least some of the occurrences of "Julian" are because of the similarity
between the masculine name Julian and the feminine name
Juliana/Gillian/Jelyan.

At least some of the occurrences of "Johan" are due to the overlap of
spelling variants of the masculine name Jehan/Johan/John and the feminine
name Jehanne/Johanna/Johan/Joan.

Francis/Frances/Franses was used as both a masculine and feminine name in
the second 1/2 of the 16th C in England and can be documented as either.

(2) Forms of Cristal are only found in Scots.  I have yet to see one in
pure English.

It's the combination of (1) & (2) that would be the problem here.  The
solid method to register this name is to document it as male, construct it
appropriately, mark the forms as "don't care" under Gender, and use the
name as female after its registered.  After all, there isn't a Heraldic
Enforcement Division of the CoA.  (If you don't believe me, take a long
walk down any set of encampments at a War!)  :)

My $.02 worth,

Mari
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