SR - Sibila

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

This is some stuff on justifying an SCA-period name.

Dore <jtc at io.com> wrote:
> Can we document a place (region, state, etc.) being named after a
> woman?  Of course.

Then please send me all the SCA-period examples you've seen (off the
list, please, direct to tmcd at jump.net).  I have few name sources and
not a lot of experience in the field.  You will assuredly save me, and
Mari ferch Bryan, et al a lot of effort.

What we'd really like to find are
  1) period examples of Latin women's given names used as the *entire*
     place name.
In case that proves difficult, we should also consider
  2) period examples of anyone's given names used as the entire place name.
  3) period examples of women's given names used somewhere in place names.
Depending on what is found for #2 and #3, we may be able to infer that
#1 is not unreasonable, even if we have no direct evidence for it.
The sources that answer #1 should also have info on #2 and #3.

There are certainly medieval examples of *men's* given names *within*
place names in English alone -- medieval names meaning things like
"Odin's hill", "Thor's farm" (Thorby), "Rolf's valley", "Leo's castle"
(Castelleon), "Alexander's city" (Alexandria), things like that.
However, all the examples I remember have *male* names.  This is not
to say that female examples don't exist, and I wouldn't be surprised
to learn there were some -- women's names generally show up in far
fewer records.  I just don't know any examples offhand.

Further, note that those examples all have a noun or other suffix:
"hill", "farm", "valley", "-ia", ...  Someone might say he lives in
Greg's house, in Greg's field, in Greg's town, but I don't know that a
period person would ever say "I live at Greg" or "I live in Greg".
I would be mildly surprised to learn of period examples, since this is
a grammatical question.

(You might say, "What about towns like Tom, Oklahoma, or George,
Texas?".  We need *period* examples.  Americans are much looser in
naming people and places than in the SCA period.  That's why some of
SCA name submissions bounce, because some people apply some American
rules -- "I'll just string together some sounds I like" -- that don't
work in most times and places.)

> However if we have to document the actual name -- Sibila -- as a
> period place name before we can use it,

We don't, if we can make a plausible case that it follows period
practice.  For example, suppose I found period place names in Domesday
Book that mean "Rolf's farm", "Thor's farm", "Njal's farm", and
"Harold's farm".  These are all Norse male given names followed by
"farm", so I can assume "Ragnar's farm" is also plausible for late
1000s England, even if I have no direct evidence for that exact form.
If someone finds Italian towns named Drucillia, Livia, and Agrippinia,
for example, then Sibyllia would likely be reasonable.

> then we have a problem because by doing that documentation we also
> document a conflict.

No.  "Names of Significant Geographical Locations Outside the Society"
are protected.  "Significant" is, by College of Arms precedent, held
to mean that it has its own entry in one of several enumerated
sources:

    Encyclopedia Britannica.
    Manguel and Guadalupe. Dictionary of Imaginary Places.
    Moore, W.G. Penguin Encyclopedia of Places.
    New Century Cyclopedia of Names
    Webster's Geographical Dictionary
    Wedeck, H.E. Concise Dictionary of Medieval History.

and 10 other sources that don't really affect this case.  For example,
Campoleone is in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, but it doesn't have its
own entry (it's just mentioned in passing in the article on Anzio), so
it's registerable even though it's a real town 20 miles south of Rome.
Sibilline Mountains (note: there's a noun here too, "Mountains") is
not registerable: it has its own entry in Webster's Geographical
Dictionary.

Daniel de Lincolia
-- 
                    *** NEW PERSONAL ADDRESS ***
Tim McDaniel is tmcd at jump.net; if that fail,
    tmcd at austin.ibm.com and tmcd at us.ibm.com are my work accounts.
    tmcd at crl.com is old and will go away.
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