ANSTHRLD - Re: heralds V1 #383

tmcd at jump.net tmcd at jump.net
Wed Mar 29 23:31:57 PST 2000


On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, dragondancer <drgndncr at uswest.net> wrote:
> I cannot seem to find anybody here in Blatha An Oire to talk to
> about getting my Device submitted and approved...Please have pitty
> on me and get me set in the right direction???

You've come to a good place for heraldic questions.

Where in Ansteorra is "Blatha An Oire"?  If that group has a herald,
that's the person to start with.  Otherwise, any of the five regional
heralds can accept submissions, so given your location, we can point
you at one of them, or perhaps a pursivant-extraordinary, who can also
accept submissions, or if all else fails we can do something else.

(Why am I thinking it's Alaska?  Probably stray echoes of Moroedd Or.)

> What I would like to emblazon on my shield is this: Or, a Stag
> courant base sinisterwise, between three rondells gules...  the stag
> is fleeing down towards the left while looking at it but to the
> right when behind it(the shield)???

A mistaken blazon can throw off an entire consultation.  Thus, if
you're not entirely sure about the language of blazon, please describe
it in plain English with as much detail as you can muster -- so thanks
for the details on the stag.  What you want is this, right?

- gold/yellow field
- a stag running, slanted head-down (this way: /) with the head to the
  viewer's left, and it's red
- there are three red circles (not hollow like an 0, but filled in),
  and the three circles are in the corners of the shield (upper left,
  upper right, bottom point)?

If that's it, it's

    Or, a stag courant bendwise sinister between three roundels gules.

and you did pretty well with the blazon.

I don't recall ever seeing any animate charge "courant bendwise
sinister" in period armory, or even any other SCA armory.  I suppose
it's probably registerable, but ...  Deer were fairly common in period
as "at gaze" ("statant guardant", standing on the shield with the
front of the body to the viewer's left, but with the head looking at
the viewer), "lodged" ("couchant", kneeling), and "trippant"
("passant", walking viewer's right-to-left).

You have to live with the resulting device, of course; I just mention
these possibilities in case you want to consider them.

The roundels are fine.  In period, they might also appear as a row of
three across the top, or perhaps one on the stag (but it'd have to
change tincture to contrast with gules).

> with researching my name and household badges...

By SCA College of Arms rules, you need to register a personal name
with or before any armory.  Which of the names below is the one you
wanted to register, if any?

>               Tina Marie Comroe
>           Dragon Dancer
>                         Reahnna Blackmoore

Respectively,

1) can't help with the surname as given; best I can do is "Conroi".
   For period in the British Isles, you'd have to drop one given name.

2) No way -- neither as a personal name nor a household name -- unless
   you have evidence that dragons were viewed in period as having been
   thought of as dancing, which I really doubt.

3) Variant of "Rhiannon", perhaps?  That was used in period only as a
   name of a goddess, though it's registerable in the SCA.  It's also
   fairly common in the SCA.  If you're at all interested in having a
   period name, I urge you to reconsider.

   The surname, in various spellings, is a fine English surname.  The
   dated examples I have to hand don't have "oo", but for all I know
   that was a standard spelling possibility (Moorefeild 1642 is the
   closest evidence I have at the moment).  What I have: de Blakomor
   1200, de Blakemore 1307, Blakemore 1547, Blackmore 1576; le
   Blacomer 1375, Blakomor 1379, Blackamore 1556.

   Welsh/English names were sometimes known.  However, I'd also
   suggest considering pure Welsh and pure English.  The standard
   period pure Welsh name was "(given name) verch (father's given
   name)", though other patterns existed, including some nicknames,
   and various spellings.  The common English pattern was "(one given
   name) (one last name)", but the last name had a much larger number
   of types than the usual Welsh.

http://www.s-gabriel.org has a lot of articles on names, tho it's
spotty and occasionally hard to follow.  They have a Problem Names
article on Rhiannon ("problem" in this case because it wasn't used by
humans until modern times so far as we know).

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

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