Hail, fellows, and well met!

During the course of your individual work on this project, you will need to complete a series of challenges relating to your social status and your relationship with the rest of the feudal world of 1207 CE.  At this point, you should have completed the background work to better understand the geographic world of the High Middle Ages in western Europe in the 13th century.  You should have also decided where your fiefdom is located, your fief’s motto and heraldic colors, and its name.  You’ll need to keep that information handy, as you will be using it again during the course of these challenges.
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The social world of the feudal High Middle Ages was one which was intensely hierarchical; every person in society had a role, and there really wasn’t a lot of movement within the various divisions of society.  If you would like a detailed explanation of the medieval social hierarchy or simply want more information about your social position in general, I recommend watching the following video on the origins of the European social order which persisted up until the French Revolution of 1789 CE.  You’re not required to watch this, but it is good information, and might prove helpful in your future work:
As an artisan, your primary duty is to see to obey your local master and work to provide the good people of your fief with goods, services, and products.  This is a social and political order based around reciprocity and loyalty, and while your life may be humble, that in no way means it is without its joys and moments of pleasure.

Artisans’ Challenge
First, please download the Artisans' Challenge if you don’t have your hardcopy of the handout in front of you. As your first challenge, you will need to:
  1. Define a series of terms are that specific to your experience as an artisan, or which might be significant in the medieval world of 1207 CE.  Please use your textbook and online resources in order to generate an original definition to each term.
  2. Create your character.  You will need to use the resources below in order to come up with an appropriate name for your character during the course of this project.  You will also need to determine what type of craftsperson you would like your character to be.  You will need to read carefully about the different types of artisans in the High Middle Ages in order to make your decision.
  3. Create a drawing of a guild sign for your character’s workshop.  Use the resources below in order help you better understand what should be included in this.  Remember: I don’t expect an artistic work of staggering genius.  I do, however, expect color, creativity, and neatness in the final product.

Medieval Naming Conventions

First, a bit of excellent background information from “Common Naming Practices: Being a Brief Guide to Bynames in the Major European Languages and Cultures” by Walraven van Nijmegen (2003).
Parts of names: In the majority of European cultures, personal names contain two basic kinds of name element, given names and surnames.

The given name is so called because the family bestowed it upon the child at birth or christening. Given names may be traditional names in the culture, saints, heroes, honored relatives, and so forth. The pool of given names differs from culture to culture. For example, Giovanni is the characteristically Italian form of John, the name Kasimir is almost uniquely Polish, and use of the name Teresa did not spread outside of Spain until very late [in the medieval period]. Because given names vary so much by place and period, describing them adequately is beyond the scope of this article. However, many collections of given names are available on-line at the Medieval Names Archive.

Surnames are the second major category of name element. Today’s surnames are inherited family names, but for most of [the medieval] period, surnames were not inherited but chosen to describe an individual and distinguish him or her from other individuals with the same given name. Such surnames are called bynames.

Byname origins and meanings: To understand how bynames originated, image that you lived in Amsterdam around 1300. You are listening to a friend sharing local gossip about a man named Jan. Now, one out of every ten people in Amsterdam is named Jan, so how will you know which one your friend means? Is it big Jan who lives at the edge of town? Jan, the butcher? Jan, the son of Willem the candlemaker? You need additional information about who Jan is to identify him, and that is what a byname does.
Bynames show up all over Europe in four basic flavors:

* patronymic – byname that identifies a person’s father. There are other bynames of relationship, but the patronymic is by far the most common of these in Europe.
* locative – byname that identifies where a person was born, lives, or has an estate. These can be formed using a proper place name or a generic feature of local geography.
* occupational – byname that identifies a person’s trade or occupation.
* nickname – byname that describes an individual’s personality, character, dress, physical appearance, or other outstanding trait. These are not chosen by the bearer of the nickname, but by friends, family, neighbors, or enemies, and becomes known through frequent use.
I strongly recommend that you read over the rest of the article, because it does an excellent job of explaining how naming conventions traditionally worked in the medieval period for most people.  Additionally, you might find the following sites useful in order to better understand the social order of the medieval world and the various trades your individual might participate in:
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Common Medieval Given Names
You’ll want to make sure that the given name you select is appropriate for the region in which your fief is located, so pay attention to the potential for Germanic, Latin, Celtic, or Norse roots.  There’s an excellent site at “Medieval English Names” which might be useful to you, even if your fief isn’t located in England.  At any rate, here is a collection of fairly common given names from the 12th and 13th centuries, separated by gender:

Male Names
Adam, Gervase, Gilbert, James, Louis, Ralf, Ademar, Geoffrey, Gerard, John, Walter, Warin, Amaury, George, Bernard, Matthew, Jan, Wulfirc, Alfred, Guy, Nicholas, Lucas, Thomas, Richard, Bernard, Hubert, Aldous, Roger, Simon, Reginald. Charles, Ernis, Henry, William, Percival, Roland

Female Names
Agnes, Agatha, Alice, Avice, Aldith, Astrid, Eva, Beatrice, Elizabeth, Mary, Martha, Philippa, Gilia, Helen, Sybil, Sadie, Lavinia, Isabella, Scholastica, Julia, Margery, Margaret, Molly, Muriel, Joyce, Cecily, Urith, Isolde, Winifred, Grace. Ann, Jane, Katherine, Linette, Wulfhild, Rohesia
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Creating a Guild Sign

During the medieval period in western Europe, few commoners were reliably literate.  Thus, in order to indicate what type of workshops or stores were present in a village, artisans would hang wrought iron signs outside of their businesses to indicate their crafts.  Additionally, these signs served as acknowledgment that the craftsman in question had completed his apprenticeship, and was fully approved and trained by his guild.  In short, a guild sign was sort of recognition by the medieval version of the Better Business Bureau.  Your guild sign should include:
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  • A central portion which will act as a sign for passersby
  • A bracket which will connect the sign to your shop
  • The name of your craft or shop
  • The colors of your fiefdom
  • A prominent symbol or symbols indicating your craft and guild affiliation
  • A symbol representing the regional location of your fief (a fleur-de-lis, a double-headed eagle, a lion, etc.)

In order to complete your guild sign, you will want to do some research into what guilds were and look at some examples of guild signs.  To that end, you will want to use the following sites:
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  • “Medieval Society: Guilds,” by Skip Knox.  (Excellent overview of guilds, their purposes, and long-term economic and social effects.)
  • “Medieval Guild Signs and Emblem Traditions,” in Artifacts of Material History. (Very nice article about the history of guild signs with many good photographic examples of what guild signs often looked like.)
  • “Guild Emblems and Their Significance,” by G. DeFrancesco.  (This links to a PDF collection of articles– the first one is the most useful for our purposes.  Be aware that it is a bit on the dry side, although you can certainly find some good information in this.)
  • “Medieval History,” Economic History.  (A great overview of the complex history and importance of guilds in medieval and early modern Europe.)