[ANSTHRLD] online OP

[Jay Rudin]

Daniel de Lincoln wrote:

> I think that registration information should not be in the Roll of
> Precedence.  If maintained religiously, it's a duplication of effort
> with the on-line Armorial; if not, it's out-of-date and unreliable.

I used to agree, until I was told what the entry is actually used for.

You are correct, if you think the code is about the individual, rather than 
about the name.  But the OP is where scribes go to find out if somebody 
already has an award being considered, and to find the spelling of the name 
for the award scroll.  The code actually means, not that the person 
represented by this entry has (or doesn't have) a registered name, but that 
the actual name listed was (or was not) verified in the armorial when 
entered into the OP.

The code of "No" is often out-of-date, if you think it means "this person 
has no registered name".  What it really means, however, is "When this name 
was added to the OP, there was no registered spelling."  Therefore the 
herald who entered the data has no definitive form of the name, so the 
spelling in front of you might not be correct.  That statement remains true 
even after the name is registered, until somebody checks the registered 
spelling against the entry, at which point the code is updated.

Similarly, the code of "Yes" doesn't mean "This person has a registered 
name," but rather "You can stop here and not check the Armorial, because 
this is the registered form of the name."  That's always up-to-date except 
for the relatively few people who change the registered form of their name.

(Of course, when people keep using different forms, such as "Danthing of 
Lynkplace", it's impossible to keep up.)

Robin of Gilwell / Jay Rudin