Æthelmearc Letter of Report Æ115
February 24, 2009 (AS 43)

Greetings from Alheydis Garnet,
I would very much like to thank those who commented on this month's letter: The Aibhainn Ciach Ghlais Heraldic Dismay, the Heronter Heralds division of the Heraldic Flying Circus and Moving Company, Master Jehan de la Marche, The Honorable Lady Myfanwy ferch Rhiannon and Red Hawk Herald!
The items accepted on this letter have been forwarded to Laurel for further consideration, where we expect they will be decided on in June of 2009.
1: Brada Boda Æthelward - New Name & New Device Accepted with change of blazon
Or, on a fir tree proper atop a mount vert a lantern Or.
2: Chernislava Alekseeva - New Name & New Device Accepted with change of blazon
Vert, a winged enfield rampant maintaining a rapier Or, a chief erminois. 
3: Ciar ingen uí Chrotaig - New Name Accepted
4: Clemente de Warrewyk - New Badge Accepted
(Fieldless) An anchor per pale argent and sable.
5: David Chadwyk - New Name Accepted 
6: Gabrielle Winter - New Name Accepted
7: Helewys Spynnere - New Badge Accepted
(Fieldless) A wool-pack argent. 
8: Isabele of Dunbar - New Device Accepted
Per bend argent and purpure, a wolf rampant counterchanged. 
9: Jok Macpherson - New Name & New Device Accepted
Per fess dancetty azure and vert, in chief a thistle Or. 
10: Lasairfhíona inghean Uí Ghallchobhair - New Device Accepted
Argent, two lions rampant addorsed tails entwined gules, a chief indented sable. 
11: Margarita de Siena - New Name & New Device Accepted
Per pale argent and sable, on a goblet bendwise sinister inverted distilling a goutte de sang a daisy counterchanged seeded gules, on a chief three mullets counterchanged. 
12: Ol'ga Godunova - New Name Accepted 
13: Ragnailt Maccuigham - New Name Pended

In this submission, the submitter has offered several modern Gaelic words related to horse-riding and horsemanship. Of these, a verb meaning "to ride" was chosen for the submitted byname. For any of these words to be registerable as a byname, we would need to document  that the word was used in period as a byname. We have no evidence that verbs were used as bynames. We know of only a handfull of nouns that were used as occupational bynames, and a handful of nouns that were used as descriptrive names, in the form "of the [noun]". See Sharon L. Krossa, "Index of Names in Irish Annals: Masculine Descriptive Bynames" [http://www.medievalscotland.org/kmo/AnnalsIndex/DescriptiveBynames/Topic.shtml].

First, we will consider occupational bynames. The only word from the submitter's list that seems at all plausible as the basis for an occupational byname is marcach, meaning "horseman, rider"

Sharon L. Krossa, "Quick and Easy Gaelic Names" under "Vanishingly Rare Byname Styles" [http://medievalscotland.org/scotnames/quickgaelicbynames/#rare] states:

Occupational bynames indicate an individual's occupation. For example, the English names "Henry le Brewere", "William le Smyth", and "William le Taillur" indicate men who were a brewer, a smith, and a tailor, respectively.[Reaney, s.nn. Brewer, Smith, Taylor]  Occupational bynames were common in many medieval European naming cultures, including English, French, and German. In contrast, they were vanishingly rare to non-existent among Gaelic bynames.

Note that official bynames -- bynames that indicted a person's office, rank, or title -- are not the same as the occupational bynames described above, and such official bynames were used in Gaelic. So while there don't appear to be Gaelic bynames describing that individual as a smith or a tailor, there are bynames identifying Gaels as earls, bishops, abbots, priests, judges, and the like.

Note also that while Gaels don't seem to have used occupational bynames, simple patronymic bynames were sometimes formed from the father's occupation rather than his given name. So while there don't appear to be Gaelic bynames describing that individual as a smith or a tailor, there are simple patronymic bynames that identify Gaels as the child of a smith or a tailor. The range of occupations used in simple patronymic bynames, however, appears to be somewhat limited.

As stated, of the words suggested by the submitter, only marcach appears to be an occupational term. The submitted documentation gives the meaning as "horseman, rider". In addition, the School of Celtic Studies website includes a listing of the articles published in each volume of its journal, Celtica. Volume 7 [http://www.celt.dias.ie/publications/celtica/c7.html], published in 1966, inludes a short article by Cecile O'Rahilly, entitled "Marcach = 'messenger' ?" (Reprints of articles are available for purchase from the School at https://books.dias.ie/.)
Evidence was found that the word marcach was used in our period. The Corpus of Electronic Texts [http://www.ucc.ie] search engine yields a great number of hits for the word in the Irish Annals. However, the usage does not appear to be as a personal byname, but at best as an occupation. In light of the "vanishing rare to non-existent" use of occupational bynames in Irish Gaelic, I don't believe marcach to be registerable as an occupational byname. That said, Krossa's article suggests that a patronymic byname based on marcach as an occupational term is slightly more plausible. This would give us something like Ragnailt inghean mharcaig. This is one possibility for the College of Arms to consider.

The other direction we could take with this name is to craft a decriptive byname in the pattern "of the [noun]". One of the documented bynames in this form from the Annals is an eich gils, meaning "of the white horse". The submitter wants to avoid using this particular byname so as to avoid confusion with the Company of the White Horse. However, the documented byname lends plausibility to any byname with the meaning of "of the [reasonable horse color] horse", and perhaps only slightly less so, "of the horse".  Some of the possibilities which follow are (probably in need of grammatical correction): Raignailt an Eich (...of the horse); Raignailt an Eich Mhor (...of the dark horse); Raignailt an Mhairc (...of the [modern word for?] horse).

While a descriptive byname involving the concept of "horse" is by far a less plausible byname than the usual patronymic byname, there seems to be a small window of plausibility. Given that the submitter is willing to accept all changes and has requested authenticity, I think we must give the client the benefit of the doubt, and of the more advanced scholarship of the College of Arms. I also think that the submitter should have the opportunity to review the options for changes of which we are already aware, and have the opportunity to express preferences. Therefore, I am pending this submission to allow for correspondence with the submitter before handing it over to Laurel.
14: Rubyn MakDonald - New Name & New Device Accepted
Sable, a wyvern displayed Or within an orle of mullets of six argent.
15: Tadhg Sotal Ó Néill - New Name Accepted 
16: William Peregrinus - New Name & New Device Accepted
Per bend sinister gules and sable, a cross bottony and on a chief argent a falcon rising winged addorsed and inverted sable between two roses gules. 
This concludes our Letter of Report Æ 115 dated February 24, 2009.