[MR] On the recent name issues getting lots of attention from the Laurel Queen of Arms

[Michael Houghton]

Howdy!

For your information:

>From Juliana de Luna, Laurel Queen of Arms, greetings to all those to
whom these presents come.
Offensive Names and the Current Situation
As you doubtless know, a great deal of concern has been expressed
about the fact that Wolfgang von Sachsenhausen, a name registered in
2007, included reference both to a Nazi concentration camp and a
scientist who did experiments there. We wish to share with you, so
that you can share with your populace, an explanation of how this name
was registered and a general road map of what the Laurel Office has
been working on since we became aware of the issue in the morning of
Saturday, June 6, 2020.
How this name was registered:
The Standards for Evaluation of Names and Armory (“SENA”) ban the
registration of names that are offensive. Specifically:
No name that is offensive to a large segment of members of the SCA or
the general public will be registered. Offense is a modern concept;
just because a name was used in period does not mean that it is not
offensive to the modern observer. Offense returns are rare because the
bar for determining offensiveness is quite high; it has not been
unusual for years to pass between returns for offense.
Offense is not dependent on intent. The fact that a submitter did not
intend to be offensive is not relevant. The standard is whether a
large segment of the SCA or the general public would be offended.
In 2007, we were not as attuned to the problems of white supremacy in
the SCA as we are today. At that time, we used a different set of
rules, but the rules about offensiveness were substantially the same.
The people making decisions on names and armory are not experts in
every topic that arises. For that reason, we rely heavily on
commentary from our array of volunteer heralds from every Kingdom. In
this particular case, no one at the Society level identified the link
between this name and the concentration camp in commentary, so the
issue was not considered at the time. I was a commenter at that time
and can say that we rarely looked actively for such issues, assuming
that submissions of hate were a thing of the past.
Now, in 2020, we are more alert to the problems of white supremacy and
racism in the Society, as are our commenters. In addition, there is
vastly more information available to allow us to identify potentially
problematic names. We make a regular practice of checking Google and
other available resources, such as the databases of white supremacist
images and lists of offensive racial terminology, when making
decisions. Offensive racial epithets such as the Gypsy have been
banned, as have certain depictions of the Celtic or Norse crosses that
are commonly used by hate groups.
What has the Laurel Office been doing?
Since becoming aware of the issue, the Laurel Office has been working
on several projects:
(1) We have prepared a report to the Board of Directors discussing the
issue, our plans for moving forward, and the calls for revocation of
this person’s registration (something that is regulated by Corpora
rather than the Laurel office).
(2) We have prepared and will shortly be issuing a Palimpsest Letter
for commentary adding a provision to SENA banning names that are
morally offensive and proposing a multi-factor test for moral
offensiveness.
(3) We have researched and prepared a proposal for how to handle names
that incorporate place names of concentration camps, which will appear
in an upcoming Cover Letter.
(4) On the April 2020 Cover Letter, we will be announcing a new policy
allowing free changes of names and armory for people whose registered
elements are offensive. For example, some period armorial motifs have
been co-opted by hate groups in the years since they were originally
registered. Likewise, the phrase the Gypsy once had a very different
popular meaning, but is now considered hate speech by the Roma people
and the United Nations. People who now find themselves with
inadvertently offensive names may wish to change them and we are
removing one barrier to doing so.
(5) Pelican Queen of Arms is forming a working group to identify other
potential red flags in names so that we can maintain a list of
problematic name elements going forward. Although Pelican and her
staff have been doing this same work behind the scenes for several
years, we now are actively reaching out to people who are not
presently commenting to request their assistance.
What can people do?
(1) Be patient. Many of the things we are trying to do require
substantial research time or input from the Board of Directors.
(2) Become involved in researching and commenting on names and armory
in OSCAR. The Sovereigns are not experts in every single area of
language, history or armory. We need and rely on commentary from
experts in a wide variety of fields. We remain particularly in need of
people with expertise in languages and cultures outside of Europe.
(3) Become involved in researching and writing articles to help
educate people on period names or armorial motifs that have
problematic modern connotations.
Julia Smith/Juliana de Luna
Laurel Queen of Arms
herald at sca.org

-- 
Michael Houghton   | Herveus d'Ormonde
herveus at gmail.com         | White Wolf and the Phoenix
Lanham, MD, USA            | Tablet and Inkle bands, and other stuff
                          | http://whitewolfandphoenix.com