Of Names and Devices

After a few years of fiddling around in my local SCA group, I figured it's about time to formalize my persona.

I was originally interested in 1480 - 1495 venice, but given the resources available, I have decided to recreate Florence instead - there is just so much more to look at. I also decided to flash forward few years to about 1505 - 1510. This small time gap allows me to wear the best of both worlds (late period cioppas, but no fuss hair coverings? Yes please).

Every good Italian woman needs a fantastic name. A quick Google search brought up quite a few resources (these will be listed in my collection of links and tutorials). I had a lot of luck with the first article I read - Late Period Italian Women's Names: Venice by Juliana de Luna. In addition to listing names with dates, Juliana also talks about Italian name formats. You will often see a given name (up to three in later period) .."either paired with a family name or with their father's name and a family name (in the form di <father's name> <family name>)." Please note, if you use a locative, "da" is used instead of "di."

Using Juliana's article, I came up with, "Francesca di Marco Luppi." Sounds pretty great, right? >.<  I totally spaced that a friend of mine had used Francesca as her name! So, rather then give up a good thing completely (Franchesca was my grandmothers middle name and I'm horribly attached), I went ahead and decided to add another first name. I found this article, Names of Jews in Rome In the 1550's, which lists Luna as a given name (it also states that hebrew women were often named in the local language, thusly these names are usable for italian personas as well). I loved it.

Luna Francesca di Marco Luppi.


So, Luna means "moon" and Luppi means "wolf." I had to make a a sly joke about werewolves with my device.

Gules between a crescent and two bicranial wolves rampant addorsed Or, a pall pean

Simple, low key werewolf implication. :D I designed this by myself, after looking at multiple registered devices. Interestingly, I couldnt find any examples of bi-cranial wolves. I find that kinda excited and slightly nerve wracking.

I am working on my badge this weekend, and then will be submitting this all in the next few days.