Persona Assistance

[Miura Suzume]

Hello!

After much lurking and hemming and hawing, I've decided to come forward with a question about--surprise!--a potential name for a Japanese persona. As I am planning a female persona, my main trouble of course has come with choosing a first name.

I have tentatively settled upon Miura Kazumi, spelled 三浦和美。As close as I can tell, the surname Miura dates back to at least the 1200s. As for the first name, while "kazu" seems to be an acceptable kanji choice for a male persona, I can't find anything regarding its use in a female name, and I don't know that  trick as simple as adding "-mi" to the end of it would make it acceptable.

Thoughts?

[Miura Suzume]

After sleeping on it, another first name option occurred to me that may actually serve me better. Suzume, spelled 鈴女, and since I know the Japanese love their puns, I might be able to play with the bell vs sparrow meanings.

[Please Delete]

Sorry, I've been meaning to get to this, but I really like what you did there. That looks reasonable, to me, and the pun is a nice bonus. Love it!

-Ii

[Miura Suzume]

Thank you for your reply! I'll chat with my local herald and see about getting it submitted soon.

[Miura Suzume]

And now comes the silly part...the kamon!

For clarification, I do already have a name and device passed, and have done since I was about eight years old. I'm tentatively planning to send my kamon in as a badge instead of a proper device and just switch my name.

This is what I'm thinking of sending in:




My best attempt at a blazon is as follows: Fieldless, upon a roundel gules, in chief a hawk's bell and in base two sparrows volant respectant, wings displayed and elevated, argent.

Here's my big question. Is it worth the potential complexity count to actually try to pass this on a roundel, or should I just submit it on a red field and apply artistic license to make it round?

[Please Delete]

I wouldn't worry about the roundel. Display it that way, if you wish, but just use a red field, unless you specifically need to deconflict with other devices. Even then, I don't know that the roundel buys you much.

-Ii

[solveig]

Noble Cousin!

Greetings from Solveig! It would be way more spiffy if you could just have your two birdies as a fieldless badge, but currently at least, the College of Arms doesn't want to register such things. I seriously disagree with their position as they register paw prints which are totally disconnected, and register designs where two charges are touching at a single point. This is very very silly. If you wanted to challenge things, I suppose that you could send up a fieldless badge with two birdies facing each other and not touching at all.

As for hawk's bells. They may be period, but they do not appear to have shown up in any documented kamon before 1650. This means that including a hawk's bell is problematic in the first place. Also, adding a hawk's bell in the way that you are doing does not appear to be a documentable pattern for Japanese kamon.

Another thing. Putting charges on a roundel is not really something that you are likely to see in Japanese kamon. Just a few hours ago, I went through all 200 pages of Daibukan volume 1 which cover the period up to 1650. Putting stuff on top of roundels isn't so much of a thing. You can put things inside of annulets, octagons, something that resembles the outline of a flower, and even a rectilinear well frame. But, not so much on top of other things.

Oh - One more thing about your birdies. You should have them flying horizontally straight at each other and not both diagonally going upwards. This particular feature is not particularly Japanese either and could even cause problems with the Core Style rules of the College of Arms. In Japan, sparrows are strongly associated with bamboo. There are a number of designs which place the pair of sparrows inside a wreath of bamboo. For example, fellows named Matsudaira appears to have a kamon of this general type on Daibukan volume 1 page 157 & 184. The same motif was born by a fellows named Torii ibid page 169-170. The same motif was born by a fellow named Date ibid page 121. The same motif was born by a fellow named Tamura ibid page 157.

Note: Yes, I have found four unrelated people who used the motif. This is important as generally speaking the College of Arms demands at least three unrelated instances to establish a pattern for an Individually attested pattern.

I am looking for someone interested in registering a volant butterfly. The College of Arms has ruled it unregisterable in the past, but it is drop dead period Japanese heraldry.

If you are interested in really sticking it to the College of Arms, it is possible to send up drop dead period Japanese heraldry if you accompany it with documentation. Given the availability of Daibukan which has lots of charges and arrangements and O-uma-jirushi can be used to document coloration. If you are interested, I can try to help you, and there are others out there who can help you as well.

[solveig]

美和 Miwa is a real feminine Japanese name for modern times at least. 和美 Kazumi is also a modern feminine Japanese name. Most period Japanese feminine names are mono thematic. The theme can either be repeated or followed by one of a small repertoire of name terminals the most familiar terminal is 子 -ko.

[Miura Suzume]

So after acquiring my own copy of NCMJ and poking around for a while, I've returned with several questions for anyone who also has a copy, or perhaps even Solveig-dono herself.

1.) On page 49 of the revised edition, near the end of the Personal Names segment, there is a mention of buke-class women using yobina. The example given is "Saburome", which combines the onyomi pronunciation of a masculine yobina with the kunyomi pronunciation of a feminine suffix. Is this on/kun combination permissible in the strict case of "feminizing" a yobina, or am I misreading/misunderstanding the construction?

2.) Assuming 1 is the case: 女 "-me" is the specific example given, but would it be considered period construction to use a different feminine suffix, or is 女 the only feasible option?

3.) Also assuming 1 is the case: Does this mean that the "[myouji] (no) [uji] [yobina] [nanori]" construction is registerable as a period name construction even for women, as long as they are of the appropriate time period and class?

4.) Is it correct to infer that onyomi names for women with 子 read as "-shi" instead of "-ko" fell out of practice after the Heian period?

Thank you for your time!

[Please Delete]

For 1 and 2 I defer to Solveig for the time being, as I'm not as read up on that and won't likely get to it, soon.

3) I'm trying to think of a case where a woman would use all three names. Even most men didn't, so if a woman had a name and acquired another (a nanori, as it were), I'm not sure of the full name construction, but what you lay out seems plausible.

4) Even in the Heian and Nara period there seems to be some confusion about -shi v. -ko names, and as far as I can tell it has more to do with whether or not one is trying to give the more erudite (read: Chinese) pronunciation. As such, I would not be surprised to see it continue, later, for anyone attempting to affect a more scholarly or classical air.

-Ii

[solveig]

Ii dono!

Greetings from Solveig! Going with an on-yomi reading is definitely more hoity toity. It is difficult enough to track down women's names as it is. I suppose I can thumb through Tsunoda's book on Japanese women's names (it is currently in a stack of books on futon next to my laptop) to see if I can spot an actual instance where the SHI reading is used. I won't do it tonight since I am past one deadline at the moment, and the thumbing involves going through hundreds of pages. I will point out that you pretty much have to go with the on-yomi reading for the entire name and not just the terminal kanji. Further, I would expect phonetic transformations on occasion with the SHI turning into JI on occasion. I do believe that know someone who registered a -SHI name a few years back. However, the mantra of the College of Arms is "previous registration is no guarantee of registerability."

OK - Now that the read recent postings feature has dumped me into this discussion, I can see prior comments. You will note that NCMJ gives at least two ways to write -me at the end of feminine names. There are also multiple ways to write -maro which turned in -maru which shows up at the end of certain masculine names. There are even as I recall a couple of different ways to write -rou at the end of masculine yobina.

If Saburoume 三郎女 is in there, then I must have found it someplace. And, it was probably buried in a text portion of Tsunoda's book someplace,

My guess is that <myouji> no <uji> <given names> would be a difficult one to document for women. My understanding is that the status of women steadily eroded in Japan as marriage patterns evolved. However, it might be possible to justify it based on the work of Jeffery Mass concerning families headed by women and female inheritance of estates and shiki rights during the early Kamakura Period. A female family head might conceivably inherit the family name and uji combination along with headship of the family's holdings. Apparently during the early Kamakura this even happened when there were potential male heirs available. I suspect that there is a fairly narrow window where we can reasonably expect this to work, but I suppose it might be possible. Unfortunately, I do not currently know where to find the court records that Mass was working with. They may actually be digitized and online these days.

I am less optimistic about <yobina><nanori> for women these days. It was pretty much mandatory for any military man of any standing from the Genpei War forward to have a yobina and a nanori. Daibukan is full of names with this pattern, but unfortunately, Daibukan is pretty much restricted to males. The whole business about <yobina><nanori> for women may have been a bit of feminist wishful thinking and a confused reading of the introduction of Tsunoda's book on my part. However, women are quite eligible to collect other names provided the art form or religious sect that was handing them out was open to women. There were some Buddhist sects which were particularly open to women while others thought that women were doomed or possibly even subhuman writing about "blood pool hell" and stuff like that.

[solveig]

Noble Cousin!

Greetings from Solveig!

Concerning: Fieldless, upon a roundel gules, in pale a hawk's bell and two sparrows volant respectant argent.

I performed a conflict check to the best of my limited ability, and your design appears to be well clear of conflict. The search I performed would yield a maximum score of 6, and your highest score was 3. Because your design is fieldless, in theory even a score of 5 has a good chance of being clear of conflict.

You have no complexity count issues from the standpoint of the College of Arms. Your complexity count is at most six if you count fieldless, and you are allowed eight. Neither are you running into problems of having too many charge types in the same charge group as your only have a single primary: the roundel and two tertiaries: the birdies and the bell. Unity of posture and orientation is where you may get into trouble. Recently, a design which incorporated an animal and a piece of architecture was returned by Laurel on this basis. Personally, I think that it is either a bad ruling or at least a poorly written rule in SENA. We can find examples of Anglo-Norman heraldry which incorporate animals with architecture. So, they may return your design for combining the birdies with the hawk's bell. The advantage of the roundel is that it retains its shape when you put it on things. The disadvantage is that it is a badge instead of a device which has administrative significance. Putting the sparrows on a roundel is a departure from actual Japanese style as is adding the hawk's bell. However, the nasty old College of Arms won't let you do "disconnected" fieldless badges even though they allow fieldless paw prints, fieldless ermine spots, &c. (Their whole justification for the connected rule is that the badge is supposed to be cast out of a single piece of metal which of course can not be the case for the paw prints or ermine spots.)

Should I just submit it on a red field and apply artistic license to make it round?

Absolutely not! If you have a red field, then it is supposed to expand to fill whatever space you put it on. The only way for it to be round would be to put it on something which is itself round like a round shield. Imposing an outline on a field is not artistic license.

[rinoa]

Greetings everyone~ (I hope I am posting this in the right place)
I am new to the SCA and recently found out I could do a Japanese persona. I was very excited, as I love Japanese culture. (I am currently learning Japanese, and I also do a lot of Japanese arts/crafts.) I would love some assistance in creating a persona, and designing a heraldic device. I have done some historical research. and I've chosen a name/clan and era.

Anyone know of any really good resources for the civil war period in Japan?
Thanks!

[Yamanouchi Eidou]

What sort of things, in particular, are you look for resources on? Are you looking for clothing, food, heraldry, etc?