Submissions Process FAQ
There are three ways to submit items to the AEthelmearc College of Heralds:
- Consult with a member of the College to craft a submission. A full listing of College members is available under the "Heralds" menu. This method gives you a one-on-one consultation with a herald who will do their utmost to work with you to come up with a name and/or armory that meets the standards for registration, is clear of heraldic conflict, and, primarily, is something that you like!
- Visit a Heraldic Consultation table, available at multiple events throughout the Kingdom, or Heralds Point at Pennsic. These venues give you the unique ability to consult with multiple experienced heralds to gain their viewpoints on your submission; after all, we all have different specialties and can each lend our own expertise.
- Compile your own submission following the process and using the forms available here, and send the completed packet to Garnet Herald. If you are not a member of the College of Heralds, you can only submit items that will be registered to you, personally.
The Æthelmearc College of Heralds does not recommend attempting to compile your own submission if you are not familiar with the submissions process. There are intricacies and potential pitfalls that can delay or prevent the registration of your submissions if you are not aware of them. If you are interested in learning the submission process, we highly recommend that you use one of the aforementioned methods and express your interest to your herald: we are always happy to teach!
Go here for a list of online resources about the submissions process, as well as resources to help you start formulating ideas for your name and device.
The current cost to submit an item is per item. An "item" is a name, device, or badge.
Generally, final notification of acceptance or return takes about 9 months after the forms are first signed and mailed. A lot depends upon when your submission hits the desk of Garnet Herald, how many submission are travelling along with yours, and whether Pennsic or the holidays are looming.
Your submission goes through a rather rigorous scrutiny process that involves heralds from all over the Known World. These heralds take the time to do extra research on your submissions, double- and triple-check the work of the heralds that have come before them, and so on to try and make your submission the best it can be. And let's not forget that this entire process is performed by volunteers who, generally speaking, have day jobs, families, and other interests that might cause delays in the system.
Your submission is first sent to Garnet Herald, who gathers all the submissions that are sent in and creates an ILoI, or Internal Letter of Intent, generally once a month. That letter is published to OSCAR, the Online System for Commentary And Response. That letter is "open for commentary" for one month, while heralds from throughout Æthelmearc (and a few from other Kingdoms, who graciously agreed to comment on our Internal Letters) give it a "first pass" that is meant to find the obvious mistakes, conflicts, etc., and "weed them out" in order to minimize the burden on the Sovereigns.
Garnet holds their Decision Meetings over Google Hangouts, and they are available to anyone who wants to attend and learn how the process works. Email Garnet for more details!
Sometime in the next month (so we're now between 2 and 3 months, depending on how much time passes between when Garnet receives your submission and when the next ILoI is produced), Garnet will hold their Decision Meeting, where the commentary from the Internal Letter is considered, and Garnet decides whether to return your submission for further work, or whether to forward your submission to the Sovereigns. Shortly after this meeting, you should receive a notification from the Garnet Office informing you of Garnet's decision.
About a week or so after the Decision Meeting, Garnet will publish an XLoI, or External Letter of Intent to OSCAR that contains all the submissions that were not returned. That letter remains open for commentary for three months, while heralds from around the Known World give it even more consideration and scrutiny. All this consideration is our best effort to ensure that names are sufficiently historically accurate, and that names and armory does not conflict with any other names or armory registered in the SCA.
"Conflict" is a term used in the SCA to make sure that someone else can't register a name or a piece of armory that is too similar to yours.
Armorial conflict stems from the historical system of cadency, which was used to distinguishing different branches of a family. In the SCA, we require heraldry that is similar to have at least two Distinct Changes to prevent the appearance of a claim to relationship.
Name conflict is used for a much more practical purpose: when Their Majesties call someone into Their Court, it would be confusing and embarrassing if two people stood up!
After the XLoI has had three months for commentary, sometime in the following month, both the Pelican and Wreath Sovereigns of Arms will hold their Decision Meetings, where they will consider name and armory submissions, respectively, from all over the Known World; usually about 150-200 submissions per month, each.
For about the two months or so following the Decision Meetings, your submissions will go through the Proofreading process, which is a final check to make sure that no potentially conflicting names or armory "slipped through the cracks" and went unnoticed, that the results of the Pelican and Wreath meetings match up for people that submitted both names and armory, and so on. Then, the LoAR, or Letter of Acceptances and Returns, will be published to the SCA Heraldry LoAR Archives, which is the final publication of the submissions that were accepted and returned that month. Shortly after the LoAR is published, you should receive a notification from the Garnet Office informing you of the final fate of your submissions.
An individual can register up to 6 names, which can include:
- Up to one primary name, which is the main name by which you are known in the SCA;
- One or more alternate names, which are other names you want to reserve for your use in the SCA (e.g., alternate personae);
- One or more household or association names;
- A heraldic title, if that individual has been granted that right by a Kingdom or the Socety.
An individual can register up to 6 pieces of armory, which can include:
- Up to one heraldic device (also known as a "coat of arms"), which is the primary piece of armory by which you are uniquely identified;
- One or more badges. See "What's the difference between a device and a badge?" below for more information.
- An augmentation, if that individual has been granted that right by a Kingdom or the Socety.
A device represents who you are as an individual. It is like your signature.
A badge stamps something as being yours, or associated with you. It is like a "property of So-and-So" stamp.
Devices are generally displayed on a shield shape, or on a "banner" of some sort (there are a variety of shapes). Badges are registered on a square shape on our submissions form and are often shown on a circular shape, but they may be displayed, in practice, on any shape. In period, badges were usually independent of a background. They were usually a single "thing", even if that "thing" was complex. In the SCA, such badges are registered as "fieldless", and are good period style.
You should receive notifications from the Garnet office when your submission has completed each decision step. However, if you want to investigate where your submission is in the process, follow these steps:
Check the Submission Letter Archive to see if an Internal Letter has been released since your submission was sent to Garnet. (Clicking that link will open the page in a new window or tab, so you can still reference this FAQ.) If so, look through the letter(s) and see if you can find your submission.
If your submission doesn't appear on any letter released since your submission was sent to Garnet, that may mean that it arrived too late to be included. If more than three months have elapsed since you made your submission, and it still hasn't appeared on an Internal Letter, email Garnet and inquire as to its status. Please be polite; remember, this process is staffed completely by volunteers.
If there is an "External Letter" button for the letter that contains your submission, that means that your submission was decided by Garnet. Look through the external letter and see if your submission is listed. Keep in mind that the spelling of a name or the blazon of armory may change during the submission process; if this happens, the reason for the change should appear on the External Letter.
If your submission appears on the Internal Letter but not on the External Letter, that means that your submission was returned by Garnet for further work. If you have not received a notification to this effect and explaining the reason for the return from the Garnet office, you should receive one soon.
If there is an "Acceptances and Returns" button for the letter that contains your submission, that means that your submission was decided by the Sovereigns, and the final results released on a Letter of Acceptances of Returns ("LoAR"). Clicking the link will take you to the table of contents for that letter. Open the letter, then click on the "Acceptances, Returns, and Pends" link. Luckily, Æthelmearc is the first kingdom alphabetically, so our Acceptances are listed first in any LoAR.
Look through the Acceptances, then the Returns and Pends (if there is a link for that) to find your submission. Again, keep in mind that the spelling of a name or the blazon of armory may change during the submission process, but if that has happened, the reason for the change will appear in the letter.
"Pended" means that the College of Arms needs more time to consider a submission. This could be due to a detail that was overlooked by the College (e.g., a request for authenticity) or an administrative problem with the submission (e.g., the blazon was sowildly different from the emblazon). If your submission is listed as "pended" on the LoAR, it means that the College is still considering it. The final result will appear on a later LoAR, but exactly which one will depend on how long the College and Sovereigns take to make their decision. If there is one or more "Pended Items" buttons for the letter that contains your submission, check each of those to see if your submission is listed.
If you haven't found your submission yet, that means your submission should be somewhere in the External Commentary and Decision process, and you should be able to find it on the OSCAR Submission Status page. (Clicking that link will open a new window or tab.)
Open that page, then use your browser's "Find..." function (usually Ctrl-F) to search for your name as it appears on the External Letter. When you've found it, scroll up until you see one of the following headers:
- In Commentary Period: This means the letter with your submission is currently in the three-month period where it is open for commentary from the College of Arms.
- Being Decided: This means the letter with your submission is due to be decided in the current month.
- Proofreading: This means the letter with your submission has been decided, and is in the post-decision proofreading process. The LoAR with your submission should be released soon!
The College of Arms registers names which could have plausibly been used in period by real people. If we find evidence that Camelot was an historical place, rather than only literary, and if we discover evidence of a period person bearing the name "Moon Unit", then theoretically, "Moon Unit of Camelot" is registerable.
The best approach to choosing an SCA name is to choose a time period (within a couple of centuries) and a culture. Then, look through lists of documented names and choose one you like. You are more likely to have a genuinely period name, than if you create a name and try to wedge it into some shakey documentation.
Remember that all the elements of your name need to work together. If we could document "Moon Unit" as an Arabic name, "Moon Unit of Camelot" would still be unregisterable. Early Welsh and Anglo-Saxon people simply didn't give their kids Arabic names. If you really have your heart set on "Jean-Pierre Fujiwara of Seville" (French guy, Japanese clan, from Spain), try choosing the single element you like the best and crafting a culturally cohesive name around it: Jean-Pierre de Rouen; Fujiwara Masamori; or, Juan de Seville
We are always happy to teach people how to research names and armory, and how the submissions process works. If you are interested in learning more, contact Keystone Herald to find out about educational opportunities in your area, and Garnet Herald to find out about how to get involved in the Submissions Process. You should also sign up for an account on OSCAR, which will need to be approved by Silver Buccle. Finally, find a consultation table at an event you're attending, and ask the herald running it if you can observe in order to learn more about how the consultation process works.