BARONY OF DARKWOOD, WEST KINGDOM – In the Cover Letter of the most recent Letter of Acceptances and Returns, the Laurel Sovereign of Arms, William Robert Smythe, announced a new policy on name submissions: “In order to foster more authentic names in the SCA, the College of Arms will now be covering the cost of all name submissions where the given and bynames are sourced from the same article at http://heraldry.sca.org/names.html .” They continued by justifying the action: “These articles are already vetted and well researched. The names from these articles were common. We believe in the SCA’s educational mission, and believe this will help further that mission by encouraging a more coherent naming pool.”
The SCAllion was able to get comments from one kingdom submissions herald on the condition of anonymity: “I hope it works! I’m so sick of rejecting submissions and having to explain that persona stories are not documentation. If I have to try to help stunt-doc yet another child of a Viking and Persian, I’m going to lose it.”
Newer members interviewed hadn’t even heard of the College of Arms, and regaled The SCAllion with stories about the D&D character on which they had based their Ninja/Italian name and wandering merchant persona.
the SCAllion 