I love wordpress! It has a stats page that lets you know things like how many hits, from what countries and what search terms and phrases they used to get there. Normally it’s things like “coif pattern,” “fillet and barbette,” “16th century Flemish dress,” and so on. This morning I found meißen adelheid in my search phrases box.
What does it mean?!? I love bing translator, and normally it loves me. Not today. I dropped my phrase in the box, set it on auto-detect language and got back that it’s Germand and means “Meißen nobility heid.” Huh?
Okay. I’ll try google translate. It gave me melancholy adelheid, which if said aloud sounds like a depressed flibberty-gibbit. Hmmm. That does describe me at times, but I still don’t think that’s right.
I tried some others. Nothing intelligible came back. So, I tried translation sites from Germany. Sure, I can’t read them, but all you have to do is drop the phrase into the box, choose Deutschen – Englische and click whatever button is nearby. They certainly must be able to do a better job translating their own language.
Turns out meißen is Meissen, a city in Germany. Adelheid is a name – a person’s name. She, Meißen Adelheid, was Ottokar I of Bohemia’s first wife and Queen way back in the late 12th century. One of the monuments I use to show 12th century headgear comes from Meissen. I’m not sure if it’s Adelheid, but at least the search term now makes sense.
But now, because of this post, I may see it a-lot more often, although the poor person searching for her is not going to find much here.
Maniacal Medievalist 