[ANSTHRLD] Fwd: Submission

[Teceangl]

> A submitter sent me the following. Can someone help
> with checking it's viability?

Not viable.

> The Ciar were literally the "Black Irish"-the dark-
> haired, dark-eyed offspring of the Spaniards who were
> stranded from the Spanish Armada.

This is beyond speculation into the realm of sheer fantasy.
There was no Spanish Armada in the 7th century, which is the
first solid date for the name.

> The name Ciara was also found at the following site as
> well..
> http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/~a8700035/irnames.html
>
> The Last Name of Mondragon is of the Spanish language.
> The name comes from the village of Mondragon in the
> district of Vergara. The meaning of the name is "High
> Pasture" or "pasture in the mountains." Literally
> translated, it means "Mount of the Dragon." The
> ancestral seat of Mondragon is located in the town of
> the same name. Documentation for Mondragon and the
> Coats of Arms was found at the following URL...I can
> provide others if needed, it is a known Spanish
> Surname...

Mixing Spanish and Gaelic is disallowed.  From the LoAR dated November 2000:

   Diarmaid de Rossa. Name.

   Submitted as Diarmuid de Rosas, this name had two separate
   problems. First, there was no evidence that the spelling Diarmuid
   was period. Second, and more importantly, mixed Irish / Spanish
   names are not allowed (Jaelle of Armida, LoAR of July 1997).

   Fortunately for the submitter, O Corrain and Maguire, Irish Names,
   list period forms of the given name. Even more fortunately, Ekwall,
   The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, under Ross,
   dates the form Rossa to 1135. We can therefore register the name
   with minor changes.

Here is the Jaelle ruling:

   Submitted as Sanchia O'Connor, this combined Spanish and Irish into
   one name. We have changed Sanchia to the closest English form.


> http://www.bdragon.com/genealogy/history/mondragon.shtml

Another problem.  Genealogical sources are rarely useful as documentation,
as they modernize, standardize, and otherwise change names into stuff which
rarely resembles the original in may cases.  Another Laurel ruling
appropriate to this situation, from the April 2001 LoAR:

  Sueva the Short. Name.

  The given name was documented from Roberts, Notable Kin: An
  Anthology of Columns First Published in the NEHGS NEXUS, 19861995.
  While we have no reason to doubt the quality of the genealogical
  research, the goals of genealogists are different from ours and
  their data is not necessarily applicable to SCA use. The College
  was unable to verify this name. We therefore have to return it,
  barring new evidence of its use as a given name in period.

  Also, please note that the College needs to know the culture as
  well as the time period of a name, especially when the name is
  documented from a non-standard source.

  Her device was registered under the name Theresa the Short.

And one (of mine) from the December 2000 LoAR:

  Emery Lioncourt. Name and device. Per bend sinister azure and sable, a
  lion's head cabossed argent and a chief countercompony sable and
  argent.

  Submitted as Emry Lioncourt, the only documentation for the given
  name was from the Info Base of the Church of Jesus Christ of
  Latter-day Saints. However, as noted before, the goals of the LDS
  are such that their data cannot be considered reliable for the
  purposes of documenting spelling variants. We have therefore
  changed the given name to a form dated to 1269 in Reaney and
  Wilson's A Dictionary of English Surnames.


> The concept for the name is a female with an irish
> Mother who married her Spanish father and returned with
> him to Spain. Thus she could have a Irish first name of
> Kiara or Ciara with her father's Spanish Surname of
> Mondragon. There is also a variant spelling of Kiara in
> the Spanish language of "cara" which literally
> means "face" or "pretty face".

And finally, the Glossary of Terms supplies a response to this bit:

   Persona Story. As used in the College of Arms, the term refers to an
   attempt to justify a name combining elements from disparate cultures
   by reference to the persona's fictional biography. It is College
   policy to ignore persona stories.

There is far too much unsupported speculation in the `documentation'.  Prove
that there is any connection whatsoever between the Gaelic language and Spain.
Prove that there is any record whatosever in history of mixed Gaelic-Spanish
names (in other words, prove Laurel's previous ruling wrong).  And if there
indeed is a Spanish soundalike name, why not document that instead and stop
trying to create hoops to jump through?

I don't believe this name has any chance whatsoever.  It violates too many
well made CoA rulings and has very little usable documentation.

- Teceangl
--
          Both my parents died tragically in childbirth.
							- RE ffolkes