ANSTHRLD - Germanic name sources

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

If I'm misunderstanding someone's meaning, please correct me.

Cyniric / "Richard Culver" <rbculver at hotmail.com> wrote:
> [Mari, I think, wrote:]
> >What this means to us: If it can't be documented, it will be
> >returned.  Period.  End of sentence.

Meaning no disrespect, I think Mari is greatly overstating the
case.

I think that Pietari's ruling in the 4/2000 Cover Letter actually
changes nothing.  He wrote, 'Starting with the July 2000 LoI's we
are going to tighten our interpretation of V.B.2.d. so that items
that don't have a proper summary of supporting evidence may be
returned instead of pended. Blatant cases (such as "<name> is
Saint Gabriel Client #1234", or "<name> is Irish" or "<name> is
in Withycombe") will be returned unless the College of Arms is
able to provide appropriate supporting evidence in its
commentary.'  So far as I know, for some years names have been
returned if they were utterly undocumented by anyone.  Note
Pelican's last bit, "unless the College of Arms is able [to
document it]".  The CoA has *always* been able to save names, and
often does.  Nor can I imagine a King of Arms returning a name
"documented" on the LoI as "X is in Withycombe" but the CoA does
the save: that penalizes the submitter, not the submissions
herald who ought to know better.  Nor do I recall a name ever
being pended due to lack of evidence: Laurel or Pelican has
always returned names that lack justification.

> So, since there is actually no listing of the Northumbrian
> "Cyniric" nor "Cyniwarding" it will not pass despite the
> elements existing and being documentable.

Meaning no disrespect, I think Cyniric is greatly overstating the
case.

I have not been following any details of this name, but I don't
actually understand that statement.  If it's "existing" and
"documentable", then it *will* pass, but how can it be "existing"
but have "no listing"?

There may be confusion about the term "documentable"; I've seen
it used in any of several meanings.  It can mean anything from
"I bought at Sotheby's this authentic original from June 1215 of
Magna Carta and I'm pointing at the spelling I want" to "here's
this chain of intuition that came to me in a dream channelled
from my grandmother from Atlantis".  Less humorously, it can mean
either hard evidence or justification based on evidence.

If Cyniric means that he believes that the elements are
justifiable (documented, weak sense) but he has no evidence of
that exact spelling (documented, strong sense): we've *always*
allowed for extrapolation from existing evidence.  I'd say that
most of the names we pass require it, if for no other reason than
a temporal or spacial gap we can't fill.  (Or don't bother to
fill: if Mari has easy citations of Richard in that spelling in
southeast England in 1189 and Gloustershire in 1559, and Colby in
Yorkshire in 1402, she'd be crazy to bust her butt looking for a
15th C Yorkshire citation of Richard; what she has is more than
sufficient for registration.)

So suppose "Northumbrian 'Cyniric'" isn't known in that spelling.
If, for example, you can find a southern cognate and several
other north-south name cognates where the Northumbrian version
has a similar spelling change, or if, for example, it's rather
common for a y<->i change, or some other reasoning, it'll fly
based on the strength of reasoning.  Often, the reasoning doesn't
have to be that strong.

But if I'm misunderstanding someone's meaning, please correct me.

Daniel de Lincolia
-- 
Tim McDaniel is tmcd at jump.net; if that fail,
    tmcd at us.ibm.com is my work account.
"To join the Clueless Club, send a followup to this message quoting everything
up to and including this sig!" -- Jukka.Korpela at hut.fi (Jukka Korpela)
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