[ANSTHRLD] Name Change - Double Check Docs?

[Coblaith Muimnech]

Rusty Jayme wrote:
> Just wondering if someone wants to double look over my  
> documentation for a name change I'm going to file - <Raulf Andrewe  
> Bawldwyn>
>
> These come out of Mistress Mari's list of Names in Chesham.
>
> <Raulf> - From Masculine Given Names in Chesham by Mistress Mari  
> ingen Briain meic Donnchada, dates from 1566.
>       http://www.medievalscotland.org/kmo/Chesham/masculine.shtml
>
> <Andrewe> - From Masculine Given Names in Chesham by Mistress Mari  
> ingen Briain meic Donnchada, dates from 1541
>      http://www.medievalscotland.org/kmo/Chesham/masculine.shtml
>
> <Bawldwyn> - From Surnames in Chesham - A-C by Mistress Mari ingen  
> Briain meic Donnchada, dates from 1581
>      http://www.medievalscotland.org/kmo/Chesham/surnames-1.shtml

You've left out of your summaries on the individual name phrases  
everything the introduction tells us about them.  A more complete  
summary might look something like this:

"Raulf" and "Andrewe" appear as masculine given names and "Bawldwyn"  
as a surname in Mari ingen Briain meic Donnchada's "Names in Chesham,  
1538-1600/1" (http://www.medievalscotland.org/kmo/Chesham/ 
index.shtml), which takes its data from a transcript of a parchment  
register from the parish of Chesham, Buckingham County, England.  The  
given names are in entries related to events that occurred in 1566  
and 1542, respectively, and the surname in one related to events in  
1581.  However, the introduction to the article says, "Given the  
small variants of spellings for extremely common names (Elyzabeth,  
John, William, etc.) in the Chesham register, it seems likely that  
those names were 'standardized' when they were copied into the  
parchment register in 1598. So some of the spellings listed in this  
article may only date to 1598 and not the year in which they are  
listed."


It's also important to remember that the argument in your  
documentation summary should support the plausibility of the name as  
a whole.  Among other things, that means that if your overall  
construction is more complex than the usual "one given name, one  
byname" you ought to offer some evidence that it's consistent with  
naming practices in the time and place to which the name is meant to  
belong.  For this submission, I'd offer something like:

The fourth footnote to Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 2373 (http:// 
www.s-gabriel.org/2373) mentions an Anne Agnes Parnell who married in  
1571, and comments the Academy members have seen a handful of  
masculine English names from before 1600 containing double given  
names.  On this basis, I believe the construction "[given name]  
[given name] [surname]" to be appropriate to late-16th-century  
England, as an extremely rare but attested pattern for names from  
that context.


Coblaith Muimnech
<mailto:Coblaith at sbcglobal.net>
<http://coblaith.net>