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Considering I was on the Incipient Principality Committee and I've never heard of the bloody snowflake story, the answer is no. Simple answer, we held a contest to name our incipient principality and design it's arms. The suggestions were displayed at several events to produce a top ten list and then the populace voted on their favorite. Now, what's the bloody snowflake story? -- Dagonell
P.S. IIRC, name and device suggestions were sent to Arianna of Wynthrope, order badge and name suggestions were sent to Fridrikr. If I'm wrong, they'll correct me. -- D

David, as I recall it told, someone (a SCAdian) flew into Rochester from someplace warm, got off the plane in one of our local snowstorms, and proclaimed "Look at all this bloody snow!" And thus it began. (so it was told to me long, long ago. At the time I thought they were B.S.ing me, but you never know).

Dagonell is correct. And I believe the people we sent them to is accurate also. I remember the contest(s). It was fun and an exciting time to be a part of :)

As I heard it, the escarbuncle was a "shield boss" and chosen, like the name "Noble Borderland" (Aethelmearc), because of our unique role as the site of Pennsic. I believe Alefredo El Bufon was a major contributor during the
naming process and could doubtless elaborate on this.

I also was part of the Principality formation committee and IIRC, the top two contenders were AEthelmearc and Land of the Lakes. The latter lost when it was pointed out how easily that was changed by adding an "f" to the beginning of the last word........

So now we are simply the Land of the Flakes? (Grin) For my own part.. I was very much on the outside looking in at this time.. Living down in Blackstone, (then Riversmeet) and... this place that would be Misty Highlands. The first 'explanation' of our name and device was pretty much dead on what Bes said. I trust David and Gail's take m'self, though if we are talking reality of the moment.

Gail, Betram came up with AEstel. Alfredo el Bufon came up with AEthelmearc. Heidi, Not to mention the Society level heralds were giving us flak about the butter company.

Thank you all for filling in the missing pieces for me. You all are wonderful!

When the Lake name was still being bandied about, weren't we joking about getting an Imperial Margerine crown? Thanks Dagonell. I took out my comment so that incorrect information does not appear.

Yes and No, we talked about getting IM crowns, I don't think all of us were joking. :)

Hi there, Arianna here. Dagonell is correct that I designed AEthelmearc's arms. Daedra is correct that the escarbuncle is considered in heraldry to be a stylized rendition of a shield boss. I chose it because it had lots of potential layers of meaning - the shield boss for Pennsic and the snowflake because the northern parts of AEthelmearc are notoriously snowy in winter. But mostly because I thought it was cool and pretty. :-) And to be totally honest, when I sat down to design possible arms, I leafed through several heraldry books and found a couple of things I liked, one of which was the escarbuncle.

Another shape I liked was a triquetra, which I thought would nicely symbolize the union of the three states in AEthelmearc (NY, PA and WV), but several people didn't like the fact that it is also commonly used as a Christian religious symbol for the Trinity so it didn't make the cut. In case you're wondering what a triquetra looks like, you can see one here: http://tinyurl.com/9w3yau4

FYI, the background went through several iterations. I had one that was green, one that was per saltire green and black, and one that was blue, in addition to the red. I showed colored drawings of them to folks at a Principality Committee meeting and said I wanted to submit only one since they were pretty similar, only differing in the background. Morguhn Sheridan, who was King of the East at the time, pointed to the red one and said "I like that" so I went with it. Other designs were submitted by Barak Sir Mago and Sir Andreas Hak.

Regarding the name, Alfredo el Bufon of Thescorre suggested it as "Ethelmark" but the committee didn't like that spelling (it reminded some people of the character "Ethel Mertz" in the Jackie Gleason show) and changed it to "AEthelmark." Then the heralds changed it again to "AEthelmearc" after it was submitted. I don't think Alfredo submitted any designs for arms. Clarissa is correct that we were originally going to be the Principality of the Lakes, but that was bounced by Laurel for being too similar to the Lakes region of England, so AEthelmearc was our second choice.

FWIW, I was in charge of soliciting submissions for arms. The two finalists were Sir Hak's design and mine; I think his was green with a gryphon and some other stuff on it but I don't honestly remember.

Oh, and a slight correction on Dagonell's post - we didn't do the top 10 of either name or device because there weren't 10 of either. We had a devil of a time getting ANY name submissions. Originally someone else was handling the name piece (Marian Greenleaf, maybe?) but then she dropped out and I took it over along with the device. I think we ended up with something like 8 device submissions and three names, then winnowed them to two each by a vote of the committee based on the informal straw polls taken at events where I displayed the options and asked people to put tokens into cups. Remember that this was before the Internet, *grin.* I went to a LOT of events that year, trying to get input. Sir Hak, who was regional seneschal, traveled even more than I did, and we spent a number of long car trips together. Once we had two finalists each for name and device, those went on the Principality poll.

Karen Arianna Kasper, Thank you so much for your valuable insight on this topic. We should consider transcribing all of this kind of information directly into the Aestel. We have a "tribal memory" that is not getting passed on to our SCA "children", and I would hate to see it lost to the mist halls of time.

Tammy has been doing a Traveller's Guide to AEthelmearc featuring the history of the various local groups. Perhaps one could be done on AEthelmearc itself!

BTW, I should point out that the three name submissions were "The Lakes," "Ethelmark," and "Magoland." The latter was submitted, yes, by Sir Mago. Later the canton in northwestern Debatable Lands (which has several of Sir Mago's squires among its members) tried to name itself Magoland, but the heralds bounced it. They ended up being Steltonwald.

Another cute factoid: Æstel was so named because Master Bertram of Bearington (Dave Schroeder), first chronicler (*regional* chronicler; by the time we became a principality we were on our third chronicler) liked the idea of relating it to the East Kingdom's newsletter, called "Pikestaff." The word "aestel" derives from the Latin word "hastula" which means short spear, hence a small pikestaff. However, an aestel is actually a pointer used when reading, kind of like a bookmark. As those who know Bertram's love of wordplay would expect, he thus combined two puns in a word that begins with the same Æ character (called an "aesc", pronounced "ash") as the name of the Kingdom.

Those of you who would doubt Master Bertram's love of puns, permit me to point out he designed the arms for Chroniclers. To wit, "Per pale sable and argent, two quills conjoined in pile counterchanged, a chief gules." If you don't get the joke then ask yourself "What's black and white and re(a)d all over?" :D -- Dagonell

John, I hoping to do exactly what you said about passing on our "tribal memory" to our children. While AEthelmearc is relatively young in Society terms, there's fifteen years of kingdom history and another 10 years of Principality history to track down. We just need to find a way to get folks sharing and talking. The threads that have turned up on this page so far are a fine beginning.

David, my hope is to do a comprehensive history of AEthelmearc at some point. We just have to find ways to get people to keep sharing.

Many thanks to Arianna for telling the origin story for the AEstel. I'd like to add another tidbit to the origin of the escarbuncle on our Arms. Many years ago, before the earth had cooled and dry land formed, my lady Eromene and I had lived in Tree-girt-sea (Chicago). We're talking about the late 1970s or early 80s. Around that time I designed a badge that was blazoned "Per pale gules and azure, an escarbuncle Or." I found a round piece of wood about 18 inches in diameter at an ancient equivalent of a Home Depot, painted it red and blue, and used gold foil contact paper to make the escarbuncle. I stopped using the badge a few years later, so when we moved to the Debatable Lands I hung the badge in one of our third floor guest rooms. Those guest rooms were frequently occupied by folks coming down to BMDL for events from points north in the Western Region, like Arianna and quite a few others who went on to be movers and shakers in the Kingdom. I can't say for certain whether or not that badge had any influence on the main charge on AEthelmearc's arms -- but I firmly believe that it must have had at least a subliminal effect.

Well, no, there are not 10 years of principality history. We became a principality in late 1989. We became a Kingdom in 1996. So there's only 6 or 7 years of principality history. Though I suppose you could count the 2 or 3 years we spent working on becoming a principality.

Karen, yes, I kind of lumped it all in together because I think it's important to get those pre-prinicipality stories as well, but I should have been a bit more clear.