Group Names

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Definition:

See also Household Names, Order Names .

From the Glossary of Terms:

A collection of people, not necessarily an official branch. Households, orders, and branches are all referred to as groups in the Rules for Submissions. [now called "Non-personal Names" in SENA] http://heraldry.sca.org/coagloss.html

Rules:

SENA GP. General Principles

http://heraldry.sca.org/sena.html#GP

GP.2. Registration and Documentation #GP2AA. The Nature of Registration: ...Some items are considered too generic to be registered. This means that they may be used by anyone and may not be reserved to one person or group by registration. One such category is generic identifiers such as Brewer's Guild// and //Queen's Guard. These names may be used by any branch to identify the owner or association of a badge, but no group may register them... These generic items are not restricted by the College of Arms, but may not be registered to anyone.

SENA on Non-Personal Names

http://heraldry.sca.org/sena.html#NPN

SENA NPN.1.C.2.C: http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/sena.html#NPN1 "Lingua Anglica Allowance: We also allow the registration of translations of attested and constructed household names, heraldic titles, and order names into standard modern English, which we call the lingua Anglica rule."

E. Generic Identifiers: As discussed in GP.2.A, some items are considered too generic to be registered; this means that they may be used by anyone and may not be reserved to one person or group by registration. One category of items that may not be registered is generic identifiers like //Brewer's Guild// and //Queen's Guard; these names may be used to identify the owner of a badge or to designate its intended use, but no group may register it (and hence prevent others from registering it). These generic items may be used by anyone without registration, but may not be registered to anyone.

SENA Appendix E: Currently Registerable Designators for Non-Personal Name Submissions

http://heraldry.sca.org/sena.html#AppendixE

D. Household Names: This category includes guilds, military companies, and similar groups of people. A variety of designators have been registered for households; in any case both the designator and substantive element must follow a single pattern for a group of individuals found in period. Models that have been used include groups like a guild or military company, members of a dynastic or personal household, and the people resident at an inn or other named residence. Discussions of registerable designators for household names can be found at:

• Sharon Krossa, "A Brief, Incomplete, and Rather Stopgap Article about European Household and Other Group Names Before 1600" - http://medievalscotland.org/names/eurohouseholds/index.shtml
• The Compiled Names Precedents: Designations - http://heraldry.sca.org/precedents/CompiledNamePrecedents/Designations.html [link corrected 10/26/2013]

Sources:

• Academy of St. Gabriel "Medieval Names Archive" - http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/nonhuman.shtml
• Database of medieval names (from the Medieval Names Archive) - http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/database/

Laurel Name Articles - http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/names/

IGI Searches, batches beginning with C, J, K, M (except M17 and M18), or P are acceptable - http://familysearch.org/

On-line Middle English Dictionary - http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/

Precedents:

Precedents of the SCA College of Arms - http://heraldry.sca.org/laurel/precedents.html
Morsulus Heralds Website - http://www.morsulus.org/ (to search the LoARs and Precedents)

Use the above links to be sure any precedents listed below haven't been superseded by newer precedents.

Collected Precedents of the SCA: Branch/Group Names - http://heraldry.sca.org/precedents/CompiledNamePrecedents/BranchGroupNames.html

Collected Precedents of the SCA: Household/Guild Names - http://heraldry.sca.org/precedents/CompiledNamePrecedents/HouseholdGuildNames.html

Collected Precedents of the SCA: Order/Award Names - http://heraldry.sca.org/precedents/CompiledNamePrecedents/OrderAwardNames.html

Collected Precedents of the SCA: Designations - http://heraldry.sca.org/precedents/CompiledNamePrecedents/Designations.html

January 2023 Cover Letter: Terms Used in Non-Personal Names

This month we registered the non-personal name Order of the Schlachtschwärdt. We wish to provide a reminder that as of the August 2022 Cover Letter, whether or not we would use a term in blazon does not matter for purposes of registering a non-personal name. A schlachtschwärdt is a German two-handed sword. As this is a period artifact, an order may be named after it regardless of whether Wreath would blazon it as a schlachtschwärdt should someone submit one on a piece of armory. We would like to remind commenters that there are only two questions about an object that should be considered when looking at non-personal names using patterns containing artifacts, flora and fauna: 1) Is the item in question known to people during our period? and 2) Is the submitted spelling for this item found during our period? Any other considerations about the item are irrelevant for the registration of period artifacts, flora and fauna in non-personal names. https://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2023/01/23-01cl.html#4

August 2022 CL - Expansion of Tincture Names for Non-Personal Names

Previous precedent has disallowed the use of sanguine in the registration of order names. [Order of Sanguins Thorn, 03/2020, A-An Tir] After extensive consultation with Wreath, for the reasons set forth below, Pelican hereby explicitly overturns this precedent. We hereby allow tenne, sanguine, and sinople as period heraldic tinctures in non-personal name submissions as outlined below. We also expand the use of ordinary color words to those that can be found in period heraldic treatises and armorials to describe blazon terms.

Past precedents have demonstrated a progressive approach to using blazon terms for color in certain types of non-personal names. For example, on the April 2012 Cover Letter, Pelican wrote,

Several French terms are identical to the terms used for heraldic tinctures, including vert, Or, and argent (which is found in sign names but not order names). This means that half the colors used in order names (vert, Or and argent) are at least sometimes identical to the heraldic terms. Even vaire is found in French inn signs. Similarly, early blazon seems to have sometimes used the everyday color terms rouge and noir. Given the variability in the use of heraldic and everyday terms, and the confusion this causes for submitters and commenters, we are hereby allowing the use of heraldic color terms in order names as well as the everyday terms.

This approach was reinforced on the March 2020 Cover Letter, where Pelican expanded this precedent to allow the use of single-name furs in order names,

Commenters pointed out that we already allow the use of some heraldic tinctures in order names and heraldic titles for which we do not have evidence in period. For example, we do not have examples of purpure/purple in period order names, yet we allow it in order names and heraldic titles in the Society.

We now expand these precedents to include all types of non-personal names, including household names. The data that has emerged between April 2012 and today has only increased the potential for confusion, not decreased it. The overlap between everyday color words and blazon terms extends to other languages spoken outside of England instead of just French; in some of these languages, ordinary color words are used in blazon into the 16th century. Given this, it is unfair to continue the division between which color words can be used for different types of non-personal names.

Continuing this progressive approach, Wreath and Pelican have considered whether all blazon terms for colors found in period armorials, whether or not they are registered by the Society, should be usable in non-personal names. We concluded that they should, based on the following data...

Though terms like tenne, sanguine and sinople may or may not be blazoned by Wreath, this has no bearing on whether or not they were considered heraldic tinctures in the SCA period. Our blazonry conventions were created for easy color recognition; in this way, all shades of red are gules so that they can be easily reproduced by artists for any project without quibbling over slight differences in color choice. This concept does not constrain non-personal names in the same way that it does armory. Therefore, tenne may be used as a period English heraldic tincture, sanguine may be used as a period English and Spanish heraldic tincture and sinople may be used as a period French, Dutch and Spanish heraldic tincture in non-personal name submissions.

Evaluating ordinary color words was a little more difficult. Not all of the heraldic tinctures that are used in SCA blazon were used in all cultures with a strong heraldic tradition in our period. Where there is no ordinary color word found in a period armorial or heraldic treatise to describe a heraldic tincture used in SCA blazon, a word was found in a period dictionary or text. These ordinary color words were compiled into a chart for an update to SENA Appendix E, described elsewhere on this Cover Letter. This achieves some consistency on what period heraldic tinctures and their ordinary color words we allow, even if we do not have evidence of their use in non-personal names at this time.

https://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2022/08/22-08cl.html#3

August 2022 CL - Heraldic Charges for Non-Personal Names

On the November 2020 Letter of Acceptances and Returns, we ruled that an order could be named after any period artifact (in that case, a gargoyle) that could plausibly be a heraldic charge, regardless of whether or not the item would actually be registered as a charge by the Wreath Sovereign of Arms: "While the 1991 precedent regarding the registration of gargoyles as charges in Society armory is unaffected by this ruling, the inability to register a gargoyle in armory is orthogonal to the ability to use the charge's name as an element in a group name following the heraldic charge pattern." [Company of the Gargoyle, 11/2020, A-An Tir] We wish to make clear that this precedent continues to apply to any period artifact, even if it does not have a "standard depiction" that would allow Wreath to register it. To the extent that some prior precedents have suggested otherwise, those precedents are hereby overturned.

Anyone submitting a non-personal name that contains the name of an item that has not been previously registered as a charge or does not appear in period heraldry should be prepared to submit evidence that it was a physical object, plant or animal, etc. that was actually found in period or known to period people.

https://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2022/08/22-08cl.html#5

October 2013 Cover Letter - Some Name Resources (an ongoing series)

This week I was asked why we can't mix and match household name patterns: that is, combine designators from one pattern and substantive elements from another. Let's start with the rules. SENA says: > The designators for household names must be documented as a form describing a group of people in a particular culture. It must be compatible with the substantive element in terms of content and style. There is no standard designator which is considered compatible with all types of names for groups of people. > Several kinds of groups of people have served as models for household names. They include a noble household, a military unit, a guild, a group of people associated with an inn or tenement house, a university or school (noting that the word college is reserved for branches), clans, and an organized group of musicians or actors. Designators may be registered in the original language or may take the lingua Anglica form. Suitable substantive elements (like simple descriptions) may take the lingua Anglica form as well. So, essentially what this says is that a household name can follow pretty much any pattern for a group of people or for patterns for places that hold a group of people, like an inn, dormitory, or abbey. But each of these kinds of household names follows different models, and the entire household name has to follow a single model. The reason we allow multiple designators for household names, instead of requiring all to use a single designator like house, is to allow for better recreation. Thus, submitters can create household groups that follow models of religious groups, groups of scholars, or military groups, as well as a group of people associated with a noble house. However, that same logic demands that we require the names of households to be internally consistent. You cannot name a household X Abbey but use a model from a brothel to create the rest of the name (no, I don't know models for the names of period brothels). You cannot name a household using a designator for a military company but use a model from a college to create the rest of the name. Now, we do allow household names, both the designator and the substantive element, to be translated into English using the lingua Anglica allowance: the Frenchl'ostel du B{oe}uf couronné may be registered as House of the Crowned Bull or the German Gesellschaft im Fisch und Falckhen may be registered as theSociety of the Fish and Falcon. As with other uses of the lingua Anglica allowance, names may be translated to make them as comprehensible to English speakers as they would be to the speakers of the original language (French, Italian, Old Norse, and the like). Remember that this does not allow the translation of the meanings of personal names or place names; personal names must stay in their original forms, while place names may use their standard modern English form. Branch names follow a slightly different rule, in part because we require branches to use specific designators which can change as a branch's status changes. We allow any type of branch to use the name of a place of essentially any size, from a small village to a large city or region. Alternately, we allow branches to use a model suitable to their particular designator. This mostly affects colleges and other specialized branches that are unlikely to change type; however, we allow them to change type of branch as well. [[1]]

May 2013 Cover Letter - Company as Order Name Designator

In period, company and its cognates was used to refer to a variety of kinds of groups of people, including military groups, guilds, and knightly orders. Under the Rules for Submissions and SENA, company// was limited to household names and not allowed as a designator for order names. However, commenters agreed that we should follow period practice and allow //company and other similar words to be used as a designator for any suitable non-personal name. This of course does not remove the requirement that a designator be documented as appropriate to the type of non-personal name submitted. It simply allows designators to be used for multiple types of non-personal names. We are therefore directing Palimpsest to develop new wording for the relevant sections of SENA.

http://heraldry.sca.org/loar/2013/05/13-05cl.html

WARNING: Do not cite this page as a reference. This page is on this wiki only to make the content "searchable" and easier to find. If you find the information you seek here, go to the original sources (generally linked) to verify the information and use them for your documentation.