Teaching convinced me that stories are the way to make anything interesting. Documenting names in the SCA can be a dry task of looking at lists of already documented names or searching through primary sources trying to find names. But as dry as it can be it's also easy. Right? I have a story about that.
I like puzzles so my initial thought that a Georgian persona sounded interesting lead naturally to the question of documenting names. I guess some people go to local name heralds for this but I had time and the power of the Internet! How hard could it be?
I asked for assistance in one of the informal Facebook groups. Could anyone help in documenting Georgian names? What I got back was the suggestion to use existing Eastern Roman sources particularly Constantine Porphyrogenitus De Administrando Imperio. It's not a bad source and I'm sure it was offered in good faith as a way to let the new guy find a name easily from a source that is already vetted. However it didn't sit well with me because it was not offering up - in my mind - a Georgian name. Sort of the Vienna / Wien divide being presented right when I want to at least attempt to be authentic to my adopted persona's culture and language.
Was Georgia and Georgian nationalism rubbing off on me that quickly? Or was it merely the fact that I was given an answer that would work instead of being involved in the creation of an answer that would actually satisfy my curiosity? Whichever it was I engaged in a bit of spite research (although with no personal grudge with the now unknown person who had tried to help!). I read the Georgian national epic in a couple of different forms and learned why there is second form for part of it. I dove into the literature on the creation of the Kingdom of Georgia and the differing ideas on how much Eastern Roman influence there was. I read the bits about the Caucasus in both a 10th century Arabic and a 10th century Persian book of geography. None of it got me much closer to a name that was documentable but, as the saying improperly attributed to Bertrand Russell goes, time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted time.
Plus, if you give me long enough I'll come up with something and I did come up with a modern ethnologist's reference to a Soviet Georgian scholar who had transcribed the records of church gatherings in the region of Svaneti extending back to the 13th century including family names and first names. This lead, with a few minor twists, to being allowed to babble on about Svan names at the 2024 Known World Herald and Scribal Symposium. It was an incredible weird intro to the SCA as it my second actual event but fun.
I'm not sure I want to encourage spite research but I do think there is value in pressing for the answer beyond the easy one.
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