the kat ([info]thekat03) wrote,
@ 2005-02-05 16:23:00
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Current mood: quixotic

just because this is the easiest way to discuss sca persona name research...
seeing as i have an exam next week, i of course am procrastinating and trying to find documentation for my persona name, huynh lan.
first, i would like to think i can get away with a vietnamese persona because the portugese merchants arrived in vietnam in the 1500's (either around 1516 or 1535). thus, even if all personas ought to be at least somewhat eurocentric, i could have hitched a ride with the portugese merchants to end up in europe.

next, the surname. huynh seems to be a harder one to document, because both huynh and hoang are derived from the same chinese root name, huang, and when i picked huynh, i didn't know which came first. of course, i wouldn't be opposed to using hoang instead of huynh, especially since most people don't know my persona name that well yet. as for documentation of hoang:

LY CHIEU HOANG (1225)
Princess CHIEU THANH inherited the throne from her father and then gave it to her husband, TRAN CANH, to end the LY dynasty.
glitch: that usage of hoang is as a given name, not a surname.

the given name, lan, translates to orchid. i think this one should be easy to document in chinese at least, because of the story of mu lan. there's even a poem about her. also, this site found by hopping from the midrealms heraldry links on chinese names documents lan as a 5th century name (because of mu lan). as for documenting it in vietnamese... can i use the excuse that since vietnam was under chinese control for 1000-ish years, they use similar or the same naming practices? (because that seems fairly true, even today)

last, i think i have an idea for a device... since huynh/hoang/huang translates to yellow, and lan translates to orchid, think a yellow orchid would be quite appropriate. not that i know how to draw a period looking orchid yet, or even what one would look like, but i think i can delay that until i can actually display a device.
so... any of you sca people have advice on how to get my persona name passed?

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[info]ursule
2005-02-05 10:18 pm UTC (link)
If you look through the site you found Lan in, it has a bunch of other feminine names based on Lan (like Jo Lan), too.

This Academy of Saint Gabriel report has Huang as a Chinese surname:

http://www.s-gabriel.org/2346

That's enough to pass Huang Lan as a Chinese name.

Of course, in the Middle Ages Vietnamese was written using Chinese characters, so Huang Lan and Huynh Lan and all the other variations would've been written the same way. Unfortunately, the SCA doesn't register Chinese characters :)

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[info]thekat03
2005-02-06 12:48 am UTC (link)
so, i could pass it as chinese, and seeing as historically, it would be written the same in chinese or vietnamese, would that mean i could get huynh lan registered as a vietnamese persona name?
and i should probably figure out the formal sca paperwork stuff to do it too, at some point...

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[info]thekat03
2005-02-06 01:41 am UTC (link)
well, i found the midrealm name submission form... here's what i've got so far: Huynh Lan

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[info]thekat03
2005-02-06 01:47 am UTC (link)
oh, and ursule, should i put you as my consulting herald?

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[info]ursule
2005-02-06 08:40 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, probably. My SCA name is Ursula Georges.

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[info]ursule
2005-02-06 08:55 pm UTC (link)
You're going to make the appropriate number of photocopies of all the webpages you reference, right?

Also, if you check the "authentic" boxes you should write what place & time period you want to be authentic for.

You're probably going to have to write more-- I'd give up on the little box they provide, and write up the full argument on a separate sheet. It goes something like this:

1) Chinese names were adopted by the Vietnamese after the Chinese conquered Vietnam. (Give dates for the Chinese presence in Vietnam, and as many examples of Chinese names borrowed into Vietnamese before 1600 as you can find.)

2) Lan and Huang are typical Chinese names for our period. (Here's where you use the evidence from the Saint Gabriel report and Yin Mei Li's article.) Thus, it's reasonable to assume they could have been adopted into Vietnamese as well.

3) Before 1600, Vietnamese was written using Chinese characters or a Vietnamese script derived from Chinese characters. (Wikipedia has a decent discussion of this stuff under the Vietnamese Language heading.)

4) Huynh and Hoang are reasonable ways to render a Vietnamese pronunciation of the Chinese character for Huang into the Roman alphabet. Here you can cite the modern equivalence of Huynh, Huang, and Hoang. If you know that the first name Hoang is the same as the last name Huang, you can use the dated first-name examples too, but you have to say why this is so; most heralds don't know Vietnamese :)

5) Give the date for missionary contact with Vietnam, to show your persona could've had contact with the West.

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[info]thekat03
2005-02-07 08:46 pm UTC (link)
*hugs*
thanks ursule

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[info]ursule
2005-02-08 05:02 am UTC (link)
Sure! It's neat to see someone breaking new ground.

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[info]ursule
2005-02-06 08:44 pm UTC (link)
You could try it. I don't know of any other Vietnamese names registered with the SCA, so yours is sort of a test case.

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[info]katerinfg
2005-02-05 10:45 pm UTC (link)
I'm not much for names, but you're in good hands there with Ursule. Let me know when you have a few hours free on a weekend, though, and we can get together and do some work on your device.

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[info]gwacie
2005-02-07 02:19 pm UTC (link)
Also, don't forget Pietro, Vashti and Master Talan :)

Talan doesn't come to meetings much, but I've got his email addy if you're interested and he happens to live like two blocks from Lyonnete ;)

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[info]thekat03
2005-02-07 08:37 pm UTC (link)
oooh, i didn't realize that master talan was that close to here! if you could send me his email addy, after i do a bit more work on this, i will probably see if he can look things over and give me more advice
i'd rather be overprepared with this submission than underprepared

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[info]ursule
2005-02-08 05:01 am UTC (link)
It's hard to be more prepared than Talan usually is ;)

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