I recently consulted with our provincial seneschal to prepare a submission for a member of his household.
Sable, an eagle Or, orbed, langued, and armed argent, and on a chief Or three lozenges ployé gules.
Josef knew he wanted his arms to include an eagle as a nod to the arms of his knight, and wanted a chief with a set of three charges that would reference his hometown football team, the Steelers, and their stadium, formerly known as Three Rivers. The lozenge ployé, sometimes blazoned an “Arabic napkin,” comes directly from the team’s logo.
Josef is a German masculine given name, appearing in the FamilySearch Historical Records as follows:
• Josef Hoecker, Male, Christening, 30 Aug 1626, Roman Catholic, Lichtenwalde Habelschwerdt, Schlesien, Prussia C99829-1.
• Josef Jakob Gutsweiler, Birth, 21 January 1634, Male, Degernau, Baden, Germany C39052-1.
SENA Appendix A states that German names may take an locative byname marked by “von <place>.”
Ulm is a city in the Baden-Württemberg area of Germany. Its name is attested to 854, where it is called “Hulma” in a document signed by King Louis the German. In Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg’s Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Cologne, 1572), the woodcut map of Ulm is labeled both in Latin, as “Ulma,” and in German, as “Ulm” (written “VLM”).
