ÆTHELMEARC
COLLEGE OF HERALDS - commentary archive
Letter of Intent #38 Jehan de la Marche,
Misty Highlands Pursuivant
From Jehan de
la Marche Misty Highlands Pursuivant
My apologies
for delay in commenting on LOI A38. I had a few comments:
1) Aleshondra
Teodorous: The spelling
with sh and ous is definitely not Italian as the submitter apparently
realized. First name in Italian would be Alessndra which she says she would
accept, and I would recommend using that.
On the last
name, Teodoro Italian or Theodorus Latin is normally a masculine personal name,
not a family name. For Italian she might be something like Alessandra di
Teodoro or Alessandra degli Teodori implying she was either the daughter of
a man named Teodoro or one of a family descended from a man of that name;
in later usage perhaps simply Alessandra Teodori, though I have not seen that
form ; in Latin she might be perhaps Alexandra filia Theodori. as daughter of
a person name Theodorus.
3) Astridr
Wolfkunzel: "Konrad" does
mean "bold in his advice" with the "kon" element meaning bold and the "rad"
part meaning advice, but I believe "Kunzel" is simply a diminutive
which has dropped the "rad" part--if it had an independent meaning, it
would be "little bold one" or something of
the sort. If she really wants "Wolfcounsel" it would be the form Wolfrat
which she found--the rat in that form is equivalent to the rad in Konrad. I
recommend she use Astridr Wolfrat.
8) Geraint Morys Geraint is as
far as I am aware an exclusively masculine name; it certainly is masculine in
the Welsh story cited and the well-known Arthurian Geraint and Enid. As
the sound is apparently what is wanted, it should be possible to find
something more suitable.
9) Una the
Bashful
Una in this
sense is, I think, a latinzation of a Gaelic name usually spelled roughly Oonagh.
Our Gaelic scholars no doubt could say more. My impression is that most of
our name experts are unsympathetic to constructions of the "the x" type as
being rare in true medieval names, though I think it fair to say that they
do exist as conventional scholarly translations of genuine names. It might
be more accceptable if the whole name were put into Gaelic.