Some notes on terminology

[Sir James A]

Copying this from another thread in which spaulder/spaudler came up.

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Random armor conversation I had on Facebook with some guys from New England. Someone posted a video of their new armor, and a good conversation came up regarding "bevor" or "wrapper" on an armet helmet. And whether or not "bevor" is "bev-or" or "bea-ver". And "arm-et" or "arm-ay". And "gor-get" or "gor-jay". I'll summarize since I don't want to copy/paste a private chat.

Back in the source italian in Boccia's book:

it gets called both "bavaria" and "volante". On the page with a sallet, it's called "lama di barbosa". Then in Blair's book on page 202, the armet wrapper is called "reinforcing-bevor or wrapper". On that same page, there's another picture of an armet, and it's just called "armet with wrapper". On page 200, Blair talks about a sallet, and only says bevor.

I brought up the vagueness of "arming coat" and "gambeson" and "arming jack" and "aketon" historically, since they used them somewhat more interchangeably than our modern-day sense on language is comfortable with. We want a "feature X,Y,Z makes it this or that", and they didn't seem to care as much. It was agreed the discrepancy in terms, especially across cultures, meant there isn't a specific label.

An armorer also said it's important that you and your armorer are talking about the same thing when you use the same words. He said that building "arms" and "arms with integral spaulder" are two different things. Someone corrected him and said there's no such thing as a "spaulder".

We also talked about rebrace, rerebrace, vambrace. It was said that vambrace, which we tend to take to mean forearm armor (like a "bracer"), is inclusive of upper cannon, couter, and lower cannon - the entire arm harness minus the shoulder. Blair said that "rerebrace" is an archaic term for shoulder and upper arm armor. Edge and Paddock use "rerebrace" to refer to early transitional armor with floating/pointed armor, and it refers to the upper arm/bicep.

The closing comment was: "I recognize that lots of people get the spelling of spaudler incorrect, but I promise you that that's how it's spelled in every scholarly source of which I am aware."

I'll see if I can get him to come down to Shortpoint. One of the guys in that convo is already coming.

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There's also a very short myarmoury thread with good info: http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.9085.html

In his work European Armour Circa 1066 to Circa 1700, Claude Blair calls them "spaudlers". Here is what he said regarding the word's meaning and root:
Claude Blair wrote:

After c. 1450 rerebrace tends to disappear and thereafter pauldron is used for the shoulder-defence. The word spaudler also referred to the shoulder-defence, but presumably in a more restricted sense than rerebrace and not including the plates for the upper arm...

Spaudler I shall confine to the small, cap-like form of the shoulder defence...

It is clearly an anglicised form of espalier, a term found frequently in English documents from the early 13th to the early 14th century. It seems at first to have denoted some form of padding for the shoulder, for an inventory of armour belonging to Falk de Breaute made in 1224 includes amongst linen armour an "espaulier de nigro Cen[all]".


The word is spelled and used the same (spaudler) in The Complete Encyclopedia of Arms & Weapons, edited by Leonid Tarassuk and Claude Blair, as well as Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight by David Edge and John Miles Paddock, A Knight and His Armour by Ewart Oakeshott, and English Medieval Knight 1300-1400 by Christopher Gravett. It seems to be a common spelling among books about arms and armour.

[Sir Edward]

Well crap, so now I have to get used to "spaudler"?? Eep. Here we go again. Forever correcting myself.

It was hard enough to make myself start pronouncing all the T's in armor (armet, bascinet, sallet, gorget), though that one makes a huge amount of sense when you consider that there are many other English words that follow that pattern, such as circlet, helmet, tablet, target, etc.

[Sir Douglas]

Heh, I looked in both the Edge/Paddock book and the Oakeshott book that were mentioned and sure enough, staring me right there in the face: "spaudlers". I never noticed that before. That one little transposal of letters never clicked in my brain. Funny though...since I have books that spell it both ways, I must have read it as "spaulder" first; I could have just as easily read "spaudler" first and we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

The link between that particular spelling and the original French espaulier still seems fuzzy to me, though. I don't understand how espaulier indicates that the D should come before the L any more than it indicates the L comes before the D. It seems they could have spelled it whichever way they wanted when they Anglicized it. Unless I'm missing something in the original French pronunciation, which is entirely possible since my French is not that great.

Armor terminology is a strange beast. Depending who you ask, you could get ten different terms for the same piece of armor.

[Ian]

Heh, I looked in both the Edge/Paddock book and the Oakeshott book that were mentioned and sure enough, staring me right there in the face: "spaudlers". I never noticed that before.

You just did the work for me!  Haha, I was about to check the same books and verify 

The link between that particular spelling and the original French espaulier still seems fuzzy to me, though. I don't understand how espaulier indicates that the D should come before the L any more than it indicates the L comes before the D. It seems they could have spelled it whichever way they wanted when they Anglicized it. Unless I'm missing something in the original French pronunciation, which is entirely possible since my French is not that great.

Armor terminology is a strange beast. Depending who you ask, you could get ten different terms for the same piece of armor.

Agreed, there was no real progression in his reasoning as to how espaullier should dictate where the 'd' goes in the anglicized term.  It's still strange to me that we agree that the terminology during the middle ages was imprecise at best, but we continue to try and make it super precise now.  It's an exercise in futility.  Spaulder or spaudler, it doesn't really matter as long as everyone in the conversation knows what piece of armor we're talking about

[Sir Edward]

Agreed, there was no real progression in his reasoning as to how espaullier should dictate where the 'd' goes in the anglicized term.  It's still strange to me that we agree that the terminology during the middle ages was imprecise at best, but we continue to try and make it super precise now.  It's an exercise in futility.  Spaulder or spaudler, it doesn't really matter as long as everyone in the conversation knows what piece of armor we're talking about

It's definitely a losing battle.

I've updated the glossary.

[Sir Douglas]

It's still strange to me that we agree that the terminology during the middle ages was imprecise at best, but we continue to try and make it super precise now.  It's an exercise in futility.  Spaulder or spaudler, it doesn't really matter as long as everyone in the conversation knows what piece of armor we're talking about

Indeed. Something about 21st century man that has to put everything into nice, neat little categories. The fluidity and constant evolution of the English language makes that very difficult. You have so many examples of variations on spelling of essentially the same word, and they may or may not take on different meanings depending on the context. Like surcoat/surcote/surcotte. Or the differences in pronunciation between coif (kwaaf - referring to hair) and coif (koyf - referring to headgear). Or maille/mail...even "chainmail". It might not technically be correct, but we all know what someone's talking about when they say chainmail. It's become part of the lexicon. Yes it's good to educate people when you can, but there's no point in trying to reverse it completely.

And that is why I refer to English as the ugly man-child of all other European languages.

[Sir James A]

Heh, I looked in both the Edge/Paddock book and the Oakeshott book that were mentioned and sure enough, staring me right there in the face: "spaudlers". I never noticed that before.

You just did the work for me!  Haha, I was about to check the same books and verify 

The link between that particular spelling and the original French espaulier still seems fuzzy to me, though. I don't understand how espaulier indicates that the D should come before the L any more than it indicates the L comes before the D. It seems they could have spelled it whichever way they wanted when they Anglicized it. Unless I'm missing something in the original French pronunciation, which is entirely possible since my French is not that great.

Armor terminology is a strange beast. Depending who you ask, you could get ten different terms for the same piece of armor.

Agreed, there was no real progression in his reasoning as to how espaullier should dictate where the 'd' goes in the anglicized term.  It's still strange to me that we agree that the terminology during the middle ages was imprecise at best, but we continue to try and make it super precise now.  It's an exercise in futility.  Spaulder or spaudler, it doesn't really matter as long as everyone in the conversation knows what piece of armor we're talking about

Actually espaulier is a term (maybe only in modern day context) for a small spaudler (ha, I spelled it "right"!). It is essentially espaulier > spaudler > pauldron in terms of size and coverage. I think espaulier comes from epalette (sp?) - or vice versa - which is the decorative "shoulder pad" piece on 17th/18th century military uniforms for soldiers of rank. Espaulier is the smallest form, and I see it with only two leather straps about half-width apart for articulation. Whereas a spaudler has a central leather strap, a front leather strap, and rear sliding rivet articulation. I'll take some pics of mine when I get home.

It was mentioned that spaudler is used in all the scholarly sources, but I'm not sure if that referred to modern day or medieval period sources. I might ask for clarification.

[Ian]

I think you misunderstood.  He's suggesting that the etymology of the word 'spaudler' comes from the term espaullier.   He just makes an assertion with zero evidence.  It could just as easily be the root of the word 'spaulder'.  That's all Doug and I were saying.  There's no logical train of thought in the reasoning presented.  We're not talking about the progression of actual armor pieces, merely the words themselves.

But really, my overall point is that trying to decipher the word spaulder vs spaudler is in and of itself a wholly absurd endeavor because we know the original terms are even more imprecise.

[Sir Edward]

Indeed. Something about 21st century man that has to put everything into nice, neat little categories. The fluidity and constant evolution of the English language makes that very difficult. You have so many examples of variations on spelling of essentially the same word, and they may or may not take on different meanings depending on the context. Like surcoat/surcote/surcotte. Or the differences in pronunciation between coif (kwaaf - referring to hair) and coif (koyf - referring to headgear). Or maille/mail...even "chainmail". It might not technically be correct, but we all know what someone's talking about when they say chainmail. It's become part of the lexicon. Yes it's good to educate people when you can, but there's no point in trying to reverse it completely.

And that is why I refer to English as the ugly man-child of all other European languages.

Absolutely. What's worse is when the same word is spelled multiple ways in the same manuscript. There are many cases of this. Of course, it was at a time when English word spellings were more phonetic. Modern English has deviated far more from Middle English in pronunciation than spelling. A lot of the spellings we're used to (particularly silent letters) are hold-overs from prior pronunciations.

A great example is the word "knight", which in Middle English was pronounced more like "k'neecht" (with the 'ch' sounding like the ch in German ich).

Check out this pronunciation guide:  http://webpages.marshall.edu/~will2/chaucer.html

[Sir Wolf]

now turtles... is it tur-tles or tu-ur-tle-s?

[Sir James A]

I think you misunderstood.  He's suggesting that the etymology of the word 'spaudler' comes from the term espaullier.   He just makes an assertion with zero evidence.  It could just as easily be the root of the word 'spaulder'.  That's all Doug and I were saying.  There's no logical train of thought in the reasoning presented.  We're not talking about the progression of actual armor pieces, merely the words themselves.

But really, my overall point is that trying to decipher the word spaulder vs spaudler is in and of itself a wholly absurd endeavor because we know the original terms are even more imprecise.

Ah, yes, I misunderstood on that.

The spaulder vs spaudler wasn't something I was pursuing, someone else is, but I found it an interesting conversation to follow.

I believe "knight" should be "k nig ht", based on audio evidence of the french knight recorded during a quest for the holy grail.

[Ian]

I believe "knight" should be "k nig ht", based on audio evidence of the french knight recorded during a quest for the holy grail.

Funny enough that's pretty darn close to the real Middle English pronunciation of the word!

[Sir Douglas]

Check out this pronunciation guide:  http://webpages.marshall.edu/~will2/chaucer.html

Nice! I find the English language to be a fascinating study. Though, I'm no expert on it by any stretch of the imagination. I just think it's neat.
Heck, even modern English can't agree with itself. American English center vs British English centre, for instance.

now turtles... is it tur-tles or tu-ur-tle-s?

I believe the correct pronunciation is "turt-lees".