ANSTHRLD - Germanic name sources

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

"Kathleen O'Brien" <kobrien at bmc.com> wrote:
> At 03:31 PM 7/15/00 -0500, tmcd at jump.net wrote:
> > Nor do I recall a name ever being pended due to lack of
> > evidence: Laurel or Pelican has always returned names that
> > lack justification.

Obviously I've not been paying attention.  May 2000 LoAR:

  THE FOLLOWING HAVE BEEN PENDED UNTIL THE SEPTEMBER 2000 LAUREL MEETING

  LOCHAC

  Artemisia de Quieto d'Arzenta. Name.

     This item had serious problems in the LoI, to wit, the
     documentation for the name was not adequately summarized.
     It is therefore pended to the October 2000 Pelican meeting.

     Rebecca Corbell and Samantha Guy, "The Life Biography of
     Artemesia Gentileschi",
     http://rubens.anu.edu.au/student.projects/artemisia/Lifebio.html,
     notes the Italian painter Artemesia Gentileschi (1593-1653).
     Talan Gwynek, "15th Century Italian Men's Names",
     http://www.s-gabriel.org/docs/italian15m.html, has Antonio da
     Quieto d'Arzenta.

Personally, I'd have returned it even without giving the advanced LoAR
Cover Letter warning.

> >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.

I'm generally in favor of snipping unneeded text, but Mari, you
did such a tendentious snip as to falsify my meaning out of all
recognition.  What I actually *wrote* was

    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:

I did not say, as your snippy work implied, that the mere
statement "X is in Withycombe" is a "get into the O&A free" card.
I agree that it's almost useless, barely a starting point in
researching it.

> 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!

Lionardo Acquistapace.  Way cool guy.  Just based on the name
docs, I'd gladly bear his children.  (Actually, I'm just
interested in the process.)

> 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!

Lionardo Acquistapace.  Way cool guy.  Just based on the name
docs, I'd gladly bear his children.  (Actually, I'm just
interested in the process.)

> 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.).

I would say that it's guided buckshot -- not all buckshot is created
equal.  Not just any pile of variant spellings will do.  The close
dated spellings should be related to the spelling you want, and
ideally you should find at least one example of each spelling feature
you use.  (Mari knows this, of course; think of it as a period-style
dialog between Magistra and Idiotus.)

For a hypothetical example, you want
    Froggin
a standard modern spelling of a surname based on Newton Froggin in
----shire (a famous shire used as a setting in many 19th C novels).
You find
    Froging 1423
    Froggyng 1467
    Frogyn 1598
and those are all under Froggin in Reaney and Wilson, so the authors
believe that they all represent the same name concept as the name you
want.  All of them justify the "Fro-", #2 justifies "-gg-", #1
justifies "-in-", and #3 justifies the "-n" ending.  Your particular
spelling isn't *known* to be period, and maybe isn't at all.  However,
this is a good enough case of the College of Arms.  On the other hand,
    Llugynt 1320
while indeed a variant, isn't useful.  The only similarity is and
"-n-", and it's already covered by the other examples.

Now, if you don't follow my points, if you're not sure if some data
supports your case or not, please feel free to put it in.  Unless you
photocopy half a book, it's easier to weed out unneeded documentation
than it is to re-research it, especially because you might have
stumbled on the perfect work that nobody else has access to.

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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