Talk:sardonyx

RFV discussion: July–December 2023

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sardonyx

Rfv-sense: "(heraldry) A tincture (variously murrey, sanguine, and/or tenné) when blazoning by precious stones." It intrigues me that the only two "blazon by stones" terms we had are the two that seem to be the least used, this one — where sources that mention it don't even agree on which tincture it is — and amethyst, which I at least managed to find 2 uses of. (I just added the main and well-attested ones: ruby for gules, emerald for vert, etc.) I'm also having trouble finding examples of the two "blazon by heavenly bodies" terms we have, dragon's head and dragon's tail, and may have to RFV them next... - -sche (discuss) 08:09, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Murrey and sanguine are usually regarded as the same tincture—a dark, purplish or brownish red, vaguely defined and rarely seen, while tenné is orange or brownish yellow. I forget if the poetic notion of blazoning by jewels for nobility and planets for royalty is discussed in Fox-Davies or Boutell—I'm sure I have a good source or two for this in my library—but if memory serves, sardonyx is sanguine (since sard is dark red, not yellow) while tenné is represented by jacinth (hyacinth—the stone, not the flower, obviously). The same two tinctures are the ones represented by "dragon's head" and "dragon's tail" (i.e. the constellations/asterisms Serpens Caput and Serpens Cauda, as the seven classical planets—Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—were already used for or, argent, purpure, vert, gules, azure, and sable, respectively). However, I forget which is supposed to represent which, and in any case this use is almost entirely hypothetical; it will occur in various treatises on heraldry, but sanguine and tenné are hardly ever encountered in historical heraldry (modern heraldry probably makes some use of them), and the practice of blazoning by planets does not seem to have been very common even amongst royalty—and I'm not aware of any royal arms containing sanguine or tenné. However, I suspect that this theoretical use may be found in a lot of heraldic textbooks, so it's probably worth documenting, even if no real-world examples are known of "dragon's head" or "dragon's tail" can be found. Let me check my books and get back to you. P Aculeius (talk) 09:27, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Just checked: Fox-Davies mentions the practices of using jewels and planets in the section on tinctures, but doesn't mention the equivalents of sanguine/murrey and tenné, at least not in the text (I may have overlooked a table). Boutell likewise mentions the practices, and I found the individual terms listed in the glossary. Boutell distinguishes sanguine (blood red) from murrey (purplish red), but more often these are synonymous. Glossary, p. 346 (1975 edition) identifies sardonyx as sanguine—again, it's a dark red stone—and p. 330 gives jacinth for tenné. Sanguine usually is mentioned before tenné, and comes before it alphabetically, but dragon's head is tenné, and dragon's tail is sanguine (both p. 318). Boutell is definitely not the only published source for these terms. P Aculeius (talk) 09:41, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Alas, such mentions are also all I can find... I think the term is dictionary-only, I can't find it used anywhere. But if I could ask you or maybe User:This, that and the other (with EEBO-searching skills) for help with another old term: can either of you find a third use of und? The OED has two quotes, and if I input long-enough snippets of them, I can find the works at Google Books, whereas I could not find any uses at all when I initially just searched Google Books for "und"/"unds"... which makes me suspect there may be at least one more cite out there that just isn't showing up in the results, in which case at least a combined sense would meet CFI. (The other heraldry terms I'm trying to cite before I resort to RFVing them are here; if we're very generous about what counts as a use, rempli and reverberant may also have 2 already, but I just can't find a third.) - -sche (discuss) 05:10, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

@-sche The singular is horrible to search for: the free search tool at EEBO-TCP (UMich) returns words such as "p•und" where one or more of the letters was indecipherable to the transcriber. The subscription-based search tool (which I can also access for the time being) shares this flaw, but has an added feature where you can narrow your search by subject. Conveniently, one of the available subjects is "Heraldic works and genealogies". Using this, I was able to find "Vnde" here and "UNDES" here. I hope it's of some use. This, that and the other (talk) 05:45, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

That's helpful, thank you! I've added those to und. (Even on Google Books I ran into the "p.unds" problem.) - -sche (discuss) 04:02, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

If you've got the same sources on heraldry as I do, then I probably can't help much on "und"—but as far as sardonyx, jacinth, dragon's head, and dragon's tail, I would note that these terms don't just appear in dictionaries, but in heraldic manuals—probably a lot of them, not just the authorities I had handy. And most serious students of heraldry will have run across them and perhaps remembered them even if no examples of their use are known (but to verify that, we'd need resources that simply aren't available online). So I think they need to be noted under their respective entries even if their use is entirely theoretical. Of course, that might be your intention, in which case I didn't need to say anything, but it'd be nice to know if that's the case! P Aculeius (talk) 17:19, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

In reviewing the entry for "sardonyx" in OED, I saw a citation to Legh, The Accedence of Armorie, 1562 for the heraldic use as an equivalent to sanguine, and on reviewing the book at Archive.org, I see that Legh (spelled "Leigh" in the book!) provides all four terms: "Dragons head" and "Iacinth" at page 11, "Dragons taile" and "Sardonix" at page 12 (I note that this pagination treats each double-page spread as one page). No examples of their use are provided, although the arms of Hunzaker and Finers are cited as examples of English arms using tenné, which I hadn't seen before. I did not search for "und", since I'm not sure where in the book to find it; you've already got the citations from the entry in OED, which I did check. P Aculeius (talk) 18:23, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Also Woodward's Treatise on Heraldry (1892) has all of these terms. It's a really thorough source that I'd put up there with Boutell and Fox-Davies. P Aculeius (talk) 18:34, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Postscript to Woodward: for some reason the table in Woodward actually reverses the terms, identifying sardonyx and "dragon's tail" with tenné, while jacinth and "dragon's head" are identified with sanguine. Not sure how this occurred, as it contradicts all of the other sources I know of—possibly plain error, or switched by mistake in the table. Besides being contrary to the other sources, it doesn't make sense in terms of the gems, since jacinth is yellow and sardonyx dark red, so I'm certain it's a mistake, even if I can't be sure how it was made. Shame, given that Woodward is really a lovely book! But given how blazon by jewels and planets is always a minor, if interesting detail, the mistake may simply have slipped through the editing process. I also note that our article in Wikipedia distinguishes sanguine and murrey, which I gather might be done in some sources—but not in any of the ones cited here, all of which explicitly identify the two as the same colour. The article on tenné also needs some attention, as it seems to insist that the colour should be rendered as tan or brown, even while acknowledging that it's also identified with orange, and is usually depicted as orange in English (and American) heraldry. P Aculeius (talk) 12:15, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

RFV-failed given that no uses have been found after several months. - -sche (discuss) 20:23, 22 December 2023 (UTC)