[ANSTHRLD] September Laurel Letter

[Herndon, Darin]

Since I haven't seen it posted here yet...

Here are the excerpts I copied and pasted from the September Laurel Letter.  Note that I do not promise that special characters or Da'uded text come through correctly.  The posting of this is merely a courtesy so that you have some head's up of what was accepted or returned before Christmas and can share joyous news with your local submitters if applicable.  The Gazette also runs this and I know their characters come out correctly.

It is fairly long as I have included any comments from the final letter as well.  The comments on the returns are fairly long but a good read for those learning the rules for device submissions.

Etienne

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September Acceptances:
Ælfhelm se Reade. Alternate name Suhayb ibn Husayn ibn Sa'id ibn Ja'far.

Áilgenán mac Áeda meic Canann. Name.

Aleysia de Eastbourne. Name.

Bianca Sereni. Name (see RETURNS for device).
Submitted as Biànca Seréni, the accents used in De Felice are pronunciation guides and are not part of the name.

Cadhla Ua Cellacháin. Device. Vert, an orle of mushrooms argent.
This device does not conflict with Johanna von Griffenhurst, Vert, an amanita muscaria mushroom couped proper. Amanita muscaria (the Linnaean designation; alias the fly agaric mushroom) has a white stem and gills and a red or orange cap with white or yellowish warty dots on it. Amanita muscaria is thus approximately half gules, and the mushroom in Johanna's emblazon is drawn appropriately. Therefore, there is a CD for changing the number of mushrooms and a second CD for changing half the tincture of the mushrooms. We advise people not to pick and eat this mushroom.

Charles the Grey of Mooneschadowe. Name.

Ciannait Chaimbeul. Name.
Listed on the LoI as Ciannait Caimbeul, this name was submitted as Ciannait Caimbuel. The byname was changed at Kingdom to match documented forms. We have lenited the byname, as required by Gaelic grammar for feminine names.

Cunovinda ingen Choinnich. Device. Azure, on a plate a dragon passant coward azure all within an orle argent.

Dáire de Haya. Device (see RETURNS for badge). Argent, a dragon statant erect affronty wings displayed gules maintaining on its breast a mullet Or, a tierce azure.

Dafydd Whitacre. Device. Per fess embattled argent and azure, in chief two moose's heads couped respectant sable.

Daniel de Burdon. Device. Per chevron vert ermined Or and sable, in base a horse rampant Or.

David ben Leon. Name.
Listed on the LoI as David Ben Leon, the name was submitted as David Ben Leon of Glaslyn. The locative based on the submitter's SCA branch name was dropped at Kingdom to meet the submitter's request for authenticity for a persona of a "14th Century male English merchant/alchemist of Hebrew descent". We have lowercased the particle ben to match documented forms.

Domhnall Dubh Ó Ruairc. Name.
Listed on the LoI as Domhnall Dubh O'Ruairc, this name was submitted as Dohmnall Dubh O'Ruairc and the misspelling in the given name was corrected at Kingdom. The submitter requested authenticity for 13th to 14th C Irish. The form O'Ruairc is a mix of Gaelic and Anglicized Irish and is not registerable. We have changed the byname to the fully Gaelic form Ó Ruairc. The documentation provided supported Domhnall and Dubh as masculine given names. Double given names were not used in Gaelic in period and have been reason for return in the past. In the case of this name, Dubh is also a descriptive byname meaning 'black'. Therfore, this name is registerable as a given name, followed by a descriptive byname, followed by a family or clan name.

Evelun Lambert. Name.

Faolan Mac Parthalain. Name and device. Azure, a dragonfly and in chief in saltire a threaded needle and a rapier inverted argent.
Submitted as Faolan MacFarland, the submitter requested authenticity for 15th C "Scottish/Irish" and allowed any changes. This name combines the Gaelic Faolan with MacFarland, which is Anglicized Irish or Scots (a language closely related to English). In period, this name would have been recorded completely in Gaelic or completely in Anglicized Irish or Scots depending upon the language used for the document in which the name is recorded. Ó Corráin & Maguire (p. 92 s.n. Fáelán) gives Faolán as the Early Modern Irish Gaelic (c. 1200 to c. 1700) form of this name. Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn's article "Names and Naming Practices in the Red Book of Ormond (Ireland 14th Century)"
(http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/tangwystyl/lateirish/ormond.html), lists ffolan and ffoulin as Anglicized Irish forms (or possibly Latinized) forms of Faolan. Woulfe (p. 399) lists the header Mac Parthaláin, which is a Gaelic form of MacFarland. So Faolán Mac Parthaláin is a completely Gaelic form of this name. Since accents in Gaelic need to be used or omitted consistently, Faolan Mac Parthalain is also a completely Gaelic form of this name. ffolan MacFarland and ffoulin MacFarland would be fully Anglicized Irish forms of this name. Since, of the options found, the form Faolan Mac Parthalain only changes the form of the byname, we have complied with the submitter's request for authenticity by changing this element.

Geoffrey Tailor. Name.
Listed on the LoI as Geoffrey Carlisle, the submitter requested an authentic 12th to 14th C British name. There was some confusion regarding which byname (Carlisle or Tailor) was desired by the submitter. Just to be safe, the LoI explained this issue so that the College could comment on both bynames. Since the notes on the submission form and the documented elements make it clear that the intended byname was Tailor, we have corrected the byname to Tailor.

Gerita del Mare. Name.
Listed on the LoI as Gerita del Mere, this name was submitted as Gerita della Mera and changed at Kingdom because no documentation could be found for della Mera. The submitter requested an authentic 15th C Venetian name.
The documentation included with the submission indicates that the submitter intended the phrase della Mera to mean 'of the sea'. Unfortunately, this is incorrect. The word for 'sea' in Italian is mare rather than mere. Additionally, the word mare in Italian is masculine, and so it would be used with the masculine particle del rather than the feminine della. We have made these corrections.
Sommelier found period examples of this byname:
"Fourteenth Century Venetian Personal Names"by Arval Benicoeur and Talan Gwynek includes Mare as a surname (http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/arval/venice14/venice14sur.html#table). The "Florentine Renaissance Resources: Online Tratte of Office Holders 1282-1532" (http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/tratte/) lists DALMARE once, DELMARE 20 times, [...] as surnames.
We have changed the byname to the form del Mare to meet the submitter's request for authenticity and to register this name.

Gisela de Bier. Name change from holding name Pamela of Gate's Edge.

Iosbail inghean Ghilla Chríost. Name.

Kusunoki Yoshikata. Name.

Líadan Arundel. Name (see RETURNS for device).

Lisabetta Micola da Monte. Name.

Patric Long C{oe}ur. Name.
Listed on the LoI as Patric Long C{oe}ur, this name was originally submitted as Patric de Long C{oe}ur and changed at kingdom because no evidence was found that de would have been used with a descriptive byname. The LoI noted that the submitter intended "Long C{oe}ur [...] to refer to the large kindness (ie : Big Heart)." Both Long, meaning 'long', and C{oe}ur, meaning 'heart', were documented as bynames from Marie-Terese Morlet, Dictionnaire étyologique de Noms de Famille. Therefore, this name is registerable as a given name with two unrelated descriptive bynames which do not combine to give the meaning desired by the submitter. The College was unable to find evidence that these elements would be combined into a single descriptive byname with the meaning desired by the submitter.

Richard of Durnford. Device. Argent, on a fess azure a lion passant Or all within a bordure azure.

R{o,}gnvaldr Vilhjálmsson. Name.
Listed on the LoI as Rognvaldr Viljálmsson, the name was submitted as R{o,}gnvaldr Viljálmsson. We have corrected the given name to the submitted form. The masculine given name listed on p. 16 of Geirr Bassi is Vilhjálmr, not Viljálmr. We have corrected the patronymic byname accordingly.

Siobhán inghean Duinn Uí Néill. Name and device. Per fess wavy Or and vert, three natural seahorses counterchanged.
Submitted as Siobhán inghean Donn Uí Néill, Donn is a nominative form of this masculine given name. As it follows inghean, it needs to be put into the genitive form, Duinn. Because Duinn starts with a D, it does not lenite after inghean.

Stella Silvana. Badge. Azure, two bendlets wavy within a bordure argent.

Taisha Markov. Name.

Thora Olafsdottir. Name.

Toussaint Lamoure. Name and device. Argent, a chevron engrailed between three wyvern's heads erased azure.
Nice arms!

Zecharia Ines Balzan. Device. Gules, a peacock in his pride head to sinister and on a bordure Or the phrase "Crux Mihi Grata Quies" gules.


September Returns:

Bianca Sereni. Device. Argent, three crosses of Cerdaña sable between a chief and a base azure.
This armory is visually equivalent to Azure, a fess argent charged with three crosses of Cerdaña two and one sable. It therefore conflicts with a number of pieces of armory protected by the SCA, including the flag of Honduras (important non-SCA flag), Azure, on a fess argent five mullets in saltire azure, and Aithine nic Merril, Azure, upon a fess argent, a mole's paw print sable. In each case there is only one CD for the cumulative changes to the group of charges on the fess.

Dáire de Haya. Badge. Argent mullety azure, a dragon statant erect affronty wings displayed gules maintaining on its breast a mullet Or.
The strewn mullets need to be redrawn. Strewn charges need to be distributed evenly over the field. While the strewing need not be done with geometrical precision, the overall effect should be an even strewing of mullets. Here, due to the small size of the mullets in combination with their uneven placement, the mullets appear to be an attempt to represent some particular constellation of stars. This is reason for return, as noted in past precedent: "[The submittor] must draw the upper portion of the field properly as mulletty, i.e., more evenly distributed. As drawn now, the design looks more like an attempt to depict a constellation ... which is not permitted as a charge in Society heraldry." (LoAR 28 December 1986, p.9).

Líadan Arundel. Device. Argent, a chevron gules between three brown sparrows close proper.
It is only acceptable to blazon an animal as a brown animal proper when that animal is frequently found in a brown color in nature, as per the Cover Letter of October 1995, which states in pertinent part in part "... animals which are normally brown may be registered simply as an {X} proper (e.g., boar proper, hare proper). Animals which are frequently found as brown but also commonly appear in other tinctures in the natural world may be registered as a brown {X} proper (e.g., brown hound proper, brown horse proper)"
Period Western European sparrows are not brown birds, but distinctly marked birds. The male is about one-third brown with the remainder marked in black and white. The less distinctive female is half brown and half off-white. One typical species is Passer domesticus, which is called the house sparrow in both Europe and the United States. It is thus appropriate to inquire as to how a bird with such natural markings would be depicted in period heraldry when proper. Documentation was neither provided nor found for sparrows proper in period armory, so we have to draw conclusions based on other similarly marked proper birds.
There is evidence that birds that are black and white in nature are depicted as black and white birds when proper, even if their markings in the heraldic depictions are not quite correct for the species. The black and white stork with red legs and beak in the arms of Die Dobrzinsky on f. 73 of Siebmacher (from Silesia) is depicted very much like a European stork. There are two types of European stork, the White Stork and the Black Stork. Both are black and white birds with red beak and legs. Siebmacher's depiction is closer to a White Stork. Rietstap's blazon for this family indicates that the bird there depicted is intended to be a stork proper (beaked and membered gules, although this would, as stated, also be proper for a stork). Siebmacher also gives us the arms of von Atzelndorf (from Meissen) on f. 156 using a black and white bird. Atzel is the German word for magpie, and a magpie is a black and white bird, so it seems logical to conclude that the bird in these arms is meant to be a magpie. The Siebmacher rendition does not do a good job of duplicating a magpie's natural markings, but its proportions and general black and white coloration are correct for a magpie. A more accurately marked magpie proper may be found in the 15th C Milanese Stemmaria Trivulziano, p. 67, in the arms of de Bertis. The magpie there is black and white and the markings mostly follow the natural markings of a magpie. The editors inform us that the word berta means magpie (although it is not the most common Italian word for that bird) and de Bertis thus has canting arms.
Because birds that are black and white in nature appear to be drawn black and white when proper in period heraldry, it is not reasonable to assume that the partially brown and partially black and white sparrow would be solid brown in period heraldry. The female sparrow is a closer match, but is still not an "all brown bird". Also, as a general rule, it is the more colorful member of a species that is used to determine the proper coloration of a species in heraldry, the peacock being the prime example of this practice. Thus, unless evidence is provided for brown sparrows proper in period armory, they may not be registered in the SCA.
Note that some New World birds that are called "sparrows" in modern terminology are mostly brown in their coloration, unlike the Old World species. It does not seem appropriate to consider species outside of Western Europe when considering the proper tincture of an animal, unless the animal being considered is a distinctly non-European animal, such as the turkey (which is found in its proper coloration as the crest of Robert Cooke in 1556).

Maria Elena de los Santos. Device. Azure, on a bend between two angels blowing trumpets argent three roses proper.
The angels are not in a blazonable posture. The angels are drawn almost identically to the angels in her previously returned device. The angels have been mirror-imaged (turned from roughly sinister facing to roughly dexter facing) and are drawn with slightly less detail at the bottom of the angels' robes. The text of the previous return, from the August 2000 LoAR, read as follows:
The angels are depicted with their faces and part of their upper torso turned away from the viewer. They should be redrawn either facing to the side or facing forward. The standard heraldic depiction is facing forward.
This assessment applies to the provided emblazon as much as it applied to the previous emblazon, and continues to be a reason for return. The angels are in a three quarters view as seen from the back, or alternately, in a one-quarter view as seen from the front. They are neither facing to the side ("in profile") or facing forward ("full face"). In addition, some commenters noted that the wings appeared more to be butterfly wings rather than angel wings. This does appear to be the case: the angels appear to have four wings like a butterfly (two wings on top and two on the bottom, with some overlap between the top and bottom wings) rather than having two bird wings as an angel should have. We suggest that the wings be redrawn in the next submission.

Tivar Moondragon. Augmentation. Sable, a torteau fimbriated and conjoined in fess with an increscent and a decrescent Or, and as an augmentation on the torteau, a rose sable charged with a rose Or, thereon a mullet of five greater and five lesser points sable.
Because this submission uses a sable rose on a gules roundel, it violates the rules of contrast in RfS VIII.2.a. It has been explicitly ruled that augmentations may not violate the rules of contrast until such time that documentation is presented showing such violations of contrast to be standard in period augmentations:
The basic question raised by this submission is can an augmentation break the rule of tincture? ... only one example of period use of an augmentation breaking the rule of tincture was found. Barring documentation of large numbers of period augmentations that break the rule of tincture, we are unwilling to register this practice. (LoAR August 1997 p. 26)
In addition, the augmentation violates the stylistic "layer limit" (RfS VIII.1.c.ii). The most generous interpretation of this augmentation would place a type of mullet on a double rose, which double rose lays entirely on a roundel (not "directly on the field"), thus violating the rule. It is necessary to demonstrate that such a violation of the layer limit would be compatible with period styles of augmentation in order for this practice to be acceptable.
The submitter has been given permission for the augmentation to match a registered badge of the Kingdom of Ansteorra, (Fieldless) A rose sable charged with a rose Or, thereon a mullet of five greater and five lesser points sable. The SCA has registered numerous augmentations in which a kingdom badge is used as an augmentation for an individual. In all such cases, in order for the augmentation to be registered, the kingdom must give permission for the badge to be used as the augmentation, and the badge must be stylistically acceptable as an augmentation in the context of the armory which it augments.