ANSTHRLD - Germanic name sources

[Kathleen O'Brien]

At 03:31 PM 7/15/00 -0500, you wrote:
>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.  

Not completely.  More benefit of doubt has been given to the
submission/submitter when interpreting this rule recently than will be
given in the future is how I read the ruling.  In fact, I discussed it with
him at KWHS.  The problem is that there are a number of submissions that
have come in lately (from various kingdoms) that consist of "[whatever] is
an Irish name" or "We believe [foo] to be a reasonable placename."  And
that was all the documentation there was.  Large numbers of name
submissions quote De Felice or MacLysaght and so have no evidence that the
name cited is period - because the entries in those sources are normally
undated.  This is more of an "on the line" type of issue - because those
sources have been viewed as reliable in the past.  That's why I try to
gather additional supporting documentation when the only entry I can find
is from those sources.

>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.  

But with fewer name commentors recently, assaults on all of us by Real
Life, and the growing number of submissions, the ability to "fix"
documentation at the CoA level is very taxed.  The April LoAR ruled on
about 440 submissions.  We each have the same number of hours in our lives.
 With more submissions coming in, that results in fewer minutes per
submission we can spend if we are to look at each one.  As such, if there
are ... say ... 20 name submissions that will take extensive research to
fix this month, that can be anywhere from 15 to 30 hours of time - just for
those 20 submissions.  

Again I reiterate that this ruling should not substantially change the way
Ansteorra does business because our internal commentary usually performs
this service and the additional info gets rolled into the LoI.  

>Nor can I imagine a King of Arms returning a name
>"documented" on the LoI as "X is in Withycombe" 

In the last two years, I have seen at least 3 submissions where the name
was simply noted as "documented in Withycombe" and when I checked it,
Withycombe said it was 19th or 20th centuries - _not_ period.  Someone in
the respective kingdoms should have checked those before they went to
Laurel.  They should not have made it out of kingdom like that.

>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" 

okay, at this point, people simply get down and worship your documentation....

It reminds me of a submission here where (and I'm still in awe of his
research) the submitter had a book that contained a photograph of a paper
signed by Leonardo da Vinci.  The spelling used by Leonardo in that
signature was "Lionardo".  Way cool documentation!

>to "here's
>this chain of intuition that came to me in a dream channelled
>from my grandmother from Atlantis".  

I've seen some that read like that...  no joke.  

Most of what is submitted falls somewhere in between.  If you can't find
the exact spellings you want, I usually recommend the "buckshot" approach.
Dig up lots of 'close' spellings that are dated.  Then demonstrate that the
variations were period ('i' <-> 'y' switch in late period, etc.).

Here's a real example I wrote (from Bordure Letter of Comment, March 1999):

	Macdoyl:  When citing a name that is not a header in the source, please
include the header name.  There was nothing in the LoI to indicate under
what header in Black, we should look for spellings similar to Macdoyl.
Black (p. 487 under MacDoual) dates the spellings MacDouyl and MacDuel to
1307, and Macduyl to before 1416.  M'Douwille is dated to 1312 and
McDowille to 1347, demonstrating that the inclusion of the "u" varied.
Given these spellings, this name should be changed back to the submitter's
desired spelling of MacDoyl which is also a reasonable Scots spelling of a
Gaelic name.

>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.  

Exactly.  But in these cases, we usually give documentation that reads
something like, "We couldn't find the exact spelling cited, but believe it
is plausible because of the following examples..." and then go on to list
everything we _could_ find.  The problem is that we've had submissions hit
the Laurel level that either didn't have the "because ... " section - or if
they did, it was either (1) not applicable, or (2) extremely thin and
poorly researched.

Given the interest Cyniric has shown in Anglo-Saxon naming practicies, I've
got to think that his easily falls in the first example.  And boy have we
sent up a bunch of names in that category.

Cyniric, I'll make a note and see if any of the sources I have in my
library have any help for you.  The more documentation you have, the easier
it should fly through the registration process.

>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.

Good example!

Mari 
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