Re: IMPORTANT ATTENTION!!!

[Robert J Welenc <rjwelenc@erols.com>]

Poster: Robert J Welenc <rjwelenc@erols.com>

At 01:12 PM 8/10/98 -0700, Tristan Roquelaure Looney wrote:
>
>I have made my finaly decision for a name, after some research, and
some reading.
>"Tristan Roquelarue Looney", if it is acceptable, shall be my
perminant name.
>Yes, my last name here IS my "real" last name, 

Please define 'real', good m'lord.  Do you mean that it is your legal
surname?  This has a bearing on registerability.

>but I have researched and found it to be a Munster name mainly found
in County Clare ("The Surnames of Ireland" by Edward MacLysagh, Irish
University Press, 1973), and originally derived from the Galic name
"O'Luanaigh," which was derived from the first name "Lauanach," which
was derived from the word "luan," which means "warrior"
("Encyclopedia of American Family Names" by H. Amanda Robb and Andrew
Chesler, Harper Colling Publishers, Inc, 1995).

Nice to see that you've done your homework on this.  :)  Now the
question is do you want that anglicized spelling 'Looney' or the
Irish {O'}Luanaigh?  Again, this bears on registerability.  (That's
not an apostrophe on the O, but a different punctuation mark
altogether.  The curly brackets are a  heraldic convention to let us
standardize odd punctuation marks not reproducible in ordinary ASCII
characters.)

> the first name DOES sound period, would't you agree, 

Very.  It has been registered 108 times in the Society.  As the hero
of a popular period romance, the name had widespread popularity.
There are recent registrations that use this as a given name in
Welsh, English, and French names. 

>and the middle name I was just amourous (sp?) for (Anne Rice wrote
under the name "A.N. Roquelaure", and I LOVE the way it sounds, don't
you?).

Well, it sounds French, and more like a surname than a given name.  I
don't have sources for French names.  Do you have documentation for
it, either as a given name or as a surname in period?

>Now, if someone would be so kind as to tell me how I may have it
approved??

Well, m'lord, I hate to shoot you down, but if you want to register
it, you will have to make some changes.

1.  You'll have to choose two out of the three. Even with a
multicultural first name like 'Tristan',  two surnames, one French
and one Irish, just isn't registerable.  Even if 'Roquelaure' turns
out to be a given name, Irish names didn't include middle names.

2.  The last registration for 'Tristan' with an Irish name was back
in 1987, when the requirements for name registrations were much
looser.  This is where the legal surname comes into play.  If
'Looney' is your real name and the form that you wish to use, then
combining it with Tristan is no problem. If you wish to use
{O'}Luanaigh, then you would have to use the Irish form of Tristan,
if there is one.  (No persona stories, please -- this was covered a
couple of weeks ago on this list.)  While Irish looks like it uses
the same letters that English does, the sounds they represent are not
quite the same. A name is either all Irish or all something else.
Trying to combine an English first name and an Irish surname would be
like trying to combine a first name in our Latin alphabet and a last
name in Cyrillic or Greek lettering.

3.  We register plausible period names.  'Tristan Looney' is
plausible.  '[Irish form of Tristan] {O'}Luanaigh' is plausible.
'Tristan Roquelaure' sounds plausible, provided you can find
documentation that it is a period surname and not just something that
Anne Rice made up to sound French. (When you write fantasy, you're
allowed to do that.) If you like, I can consult with other SCA
heralds to try to find such documentation.

There is no requirement that you register your name to play with us,
and if you want to use a name that is unregisterable, no one will
throw you out for using it.  But since the purpose of the SCA is to
learn and re-create the Middle Ages and Renaissance, we heralds try
to encourage everyone to use a name that *could* have existed, rather
than one that couldn't.  We would be failing in our duty if we did
not.

In service to Atlantia and Atlantians,

Lady Alanna Volchevo Lesa
Partan Herald, Barony of Lochmere
Laurel Minion
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