Kingdom of Atenveldt
Heraldic Submissions Page
(administered by the Brickbat Herald)
|
Atenveldt Submissions (excerpted from the S.C.A. College of Arms' Letters of Acceptance and Return)
ATENVELDT REGISTRATIONS by the College of Arms, August 2004: Adrian Drake. Name and device. Per bend sinister vert and sable, a dragon segreant and a horse rampant contourny argent. This name does not conflict with Adrian Dragon, registered in August 1999. RfS V.1.a.ii says "Two names are significantly different if they look and sound significantly different." Although "dragon" and "drake" share a common etymology, they are not variants of the same name, and they are significantly different in sound and appearance. Alewijn van Zeebrouck. Name change from Æðelfrið se hluda. Nice name! His previous name, Æðelfrið se hluda, is retained as an alternate name. Christine von Guttin. Name and device. Azure, a cat statant guardant and on a chief Or, three crosses formy sable. Constance Audrey. Name and device. Per chevron azure and sable, a horse passant and a horseshoe inverted argent. Nice name! Please instruct the submitter to draw the line of division higher: as drawn this is barely acceptable. With a more standard passant for the horse, raising the line would be more feasible. Dionysus of Grantham. Badge. Argent, in pale a frog sejant affronty and a scourge bendwise sinister all within a bordure vert. Elena Glamorgan. Device. Per pale argent and vert, a natural panther passant contourny and a bear passant counterchanged and on a chief azure three cinquefoils argent. Gabrielle de Benon. Device change (see RETURNS for name). Gules, a bend sinister cotised Or between a dunghill cock and a basket of eggs argent. Please advise the submitter to draw the bend wider. Her old device, Per pale gules and argent, a sea-horse within a bordure semy-de-lis all counterchanged, is retained as a badge. Submitted under the name Melissa the Poulteress. Grigour MacEnelly. Badge. (Fieldless) A dragonfly per pale sable and vert. Hraban Peterov. Name. The given name was documented from a book of Russian names, but it is, in fact, a German name. Metron Ariston notes "One of the most famous encyclopedists of the medieval period was Hraban Maur whose name usually appears in the Latinized form Hrabanus Maurus, abbot of Fulda and archbishop of Mainz. I strongly suspect that the listing in Moroshkin from which Goldschmidt draws refers to him since it is dated to 847 when he was elected archbishop of Mainz." Wickenden includes names of foreigners found in Russian contexts, so it is highly likely that this is a German name found in a Russian document. Therefore, this name mixes German and Russian in a single name, which is one step from period practice. Ívarr bjarnherðar. Device. Vert, a chevron inverted engrailed and in chief a beehive Or. Please advise the submitter to draw the chevron a bit higher and with fewer and larger engrailings. Mihil von Brandenburg. Name and device. Per pall inverted sable, vert and argent, three stag's heads cabossed counterchanged argent and sable. This name combines an English spelling for the given name with a German byname, which is one step from period practice. Orion Storm Bruin. Name (see RETURNS for device). This name combines a Russian given name with two English bynames. Combining English and Russian is one step from period practice. Oslaf of Northumbria. Name and device. Sable, in chief three pallets couped argent. Sæunn kerling. Name. Seán Codlatach. Name and device. Or semy of triquetras, a lion dormant contourny sable. There was some discussion whether Codlatach, 'sleepy', was a word found in period. MacBain, An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language, s.n. cadal (sleep) says "Irish codladh, Old Irish cotlud." A search of CELT, http://www.ucc.ie/celt, finds examples of "cotlud" in Old/Middle Irish contexts and "codladh" in Early Modern Irish contexts. Codlatach is a reasonable adjectival form of Codladh; therefore, we are giving the submitter the benefit of the doubt and registering this name as submitted. Sorcha inghean Dhara mhic Seachnasaigh and Muirgheal inghean Raghailligh mhic Seachnasaigh. Joint badge. Per fess azure and vert, a fret argent within a bordure Or. Thomas Godefroy. Device. Per fess gules and sable, two griffins addorsed and a Maltese cross argent. ATENVELDT RETURNS by the College of Arms, August 2004: Brian Sigfridsson von Niedersachsen. Device. Argent, three bendlets azure each charged with a mullet of six points palewise Or, a bordure counterchanged. Commentary from the College of Arms overwhelmingly indicated that this combination of multiple bends and bordure is excessive counterchanging. The following precedents are relevant: It was not unusual for barry or paly fields in period to be drawn with an odd number of traits (which we'd blazon as bars or palets); see, for example, the arms of Mouton (Multon, Moleton) found both as Barry argent and gules. and Argent, three bars gules. (Dictionary of British Arms, Volume 1, pp 59, 88; Foster, p.145) and the arms of von Rosenberg, whose Per fess field has in base either three bends or bendy depending upon the artist's whim (Siebmacher, p. 8; Neubecker and Rentzmann, p. 290). Even when the distinction is worth blazoning, it's worth no difference. [Dec 1997, Ret-Atlantia, Aron Nied{z'}wied{z'}] [Bendy sinister vert and Or, a hawk striking contourny argent a bordure counterchanged] The commentary from the College of Arms overwhelmingly indicated that the combination of bendy sinister and bordure is excessive counterchanging. In general, we would like to see documentation for any charge counterchanged over a multiply divided field, such as barry or gyronny. [Tvorimir Danilov, 08/01, R-An Tir] As three bends are equivalent to a bendy field and bordures cannot be counterchanged across a bendy field, couterchanging a bordure over three bends is excessive. Lacking documentation for counterchanging a bordure across three or more ordinaries in period armory, this must be returned. Melissa the Poulteress. Name change from Gabrielle de Benon. The summarization stated that the submitter's legal given name is Melissa; however, no documentation was supplied supporting this claim. This means that the name Melissa must be documented to be registered. The LoI documented this name from ancient and early medieval Greece. However, Greek/English combinations were ruled unregisterable in January 2003: "No evidence was presented that England and the Byzantine Empire had significant contact in period. Lacking such evidence, a name mixing English and Byzantine Greek is not registerable." The name Melissa appears in the 16th C Italian poem Orlando Furioso. Unfortunately, the Melissa in Orlando Furioso is a fairy, not a human. Precedent of February 1999 says for a literary name to be registerable "it has to be a name of a human being in the story. God/dess, elf, dwarf, etc. names aren't usable." Some questions were raised whether the byname Poulteress was registerable. The OED dates poulteress to 1723. However, the OED s.n. -ess says, "By writers of the 16th and succeeding centuries derivatives in -ess were formed very freely." The OED shows a large number of such names prior to 1600, most towards the end of the 16th C. Examples include laundresse 1550, cokysse/Cookesse 1459/1552, poetess 1530, and presbyteresse 1546 (we note this denotes the wife of a presbyter or priest). Given this pattern, Poulteress should be registerable, even though there are no dated examples prior to 1732. Her armory was registered under the name Gabrielle de Benon. Mikolaj Bęart. Name. Although the cited Web site shows that Bękart is a modern Polish word meaning "bastard", no documentation was provided and none found to suggest that the word Bękart was used as a byname in period, that it follows a pattern found in descriptive Polish bynames in period, or that it is even a period word. Barring such documentation, this byname is not registerable. Although not reason for return, Nebuly Herald points out a few minor problems with the given name which the submitter may want to consider: The standard modern spelling for the given name is actually Miko{l/}aj (note the l-slash). From the numerous citations in the SSNO (s.n. Miko{l/}aj), it appears that Micolay was the standard period spelling until 1450. There is a 1479 citation of Mykolayem (in a non-nominative case), which would justify the use of a k in the name. However, I find no evidence for spellings with a final -j in period. Orion Storm Bruin. Device. Per fess azure and vert, on a bend cotised between a bear passant and a heart Or, four gouts inverted palewise gules. The gouttes as drawn are not identifiable as such; making them palewise and inverted on the narrow bend reduces their identifiability past the breaking point. This is in itself cause for return. Furthermore, this device is overly complex. Several commenters argued that the complexity count of this device should include the bend and its cotises as separate charge types. This is not the case, given that period blazons often used the descriptions a bend cotised and a bend between two bendlets interchangeably to describe the same armory. But while the complexity count is only eight, that does not necessarily help, in accordance with precedent: [Returning Per pale argent and vert, a thistle and a drawn bow reversed and nocked with an arrow counterchanged, on a chief gules three goblets Or] However, because the "complexity count" of types + tinctures is a rule of thumb, rather than a hard and fast rule, it doesn't strictly matter whether we decide that the number of tinctures and charges in the design adds to nine (counting the bow and the arrow separately) or eight (counting the bow and arrow together as a "bow and arrow") charge. Inspection of this armory shows that it has "crossed over the line" for allowable complexity, and must be returned. [Sep 2003, Ret-Caid, Brian McRay] Likewise, in the present case it doesn't strictly matter whether we total the number of tinctures and charge types as nine (counting the cotises separate from the bend) or eight (counting bend and cotises as the same type). Inspection of the present submission shows that it too has "crossed over the line" and must be returned. Wilhelm Ludwig von Rabeslautern. Name (see PENDS for device). No documentation was submitted and none found of a pattern of usage for the deuterotheme -lautern. Although the documentation included the period placename Kaiserslautern, this was the sole example of this usage located so far. This does not support a pattern, nor does it support givenname+lautern as a byname or placename pattern. We would change the byname to von Lautern, but the submitter will not accept major changes. His device is pended under the holding name William of Tir Ysgithr. Wilhelm Zugspitzer. Name. No evidence was submitted and none found that German locative bynames were formed from the names of mountains in period. While we note Berg was used as a topographic byname, this is not the same as using the name of a specific mountain to form a byname. Furthermore, no documentation was presented and none found that Zugspitz was the name for this mountain in period. To register Zugspitzer, we would need documentation of both the specific mountain name and the pattern of forming bynames from names of mountains. If such documentation were presented, we note that Zugspitzer would be the expected form for this byname. |
This page is best viewed with a minimum of 800 x 600 resolution, and 16 million colors.