You're a Monarch or Nobility. You're Going to Get a Nickname
Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title.
Thomas Paine
A nickname is an informal name used to replace a formal one. A nickname often morphs to familiar or humorous terms. The word nickname is derived from the Middle English ekename, literally meaning an additional name. The first recorded use of “eke name” was in the Middle English devotional Handlyng Synne in 1303 by Robert Manning (nickname, “Bobby Prayer Hands”) a Gilbertine Monk of Brunne. Nicknames have been around for centuries and will be around for centuries. Many people, including you, may have one at one time or another.
Today, many of us are familiar with some athlete nicknames such as “Babe” (Ruth), The Great One”, Wayne Gretzky, “Crazy Legs Hirsh, (Elroy), “Shoeless Joe” (Jackson), “Pistol Pete” (Maravich) or “Iron” (Mike Tyson). We also have to mention baseball player, Jhostynxon Garcia, nicknamed “Password”. In the Old West we had “Buffalo” Bill Cody, “Texas” Jack Omohundro, “Wild Bill Hickok and “Calamity” Jane. Gangsters loved nicknames and the media loved them too. We had Charles “Lucky” Luciano, “Scarface” Al Capone, Lester “Babyface” Nelson, and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. In fact, some nicknames have nicknames, we counted 15 for Elizabeth starting with Liz and on to Lizzie, Betty, Beth, Bess………Margaret has Peggy and Maggie and Margie, John has Jack, Jock and Jake. Cities have nicknames, “The Big Apple”, “The Windy City”, “La La Land”. Even countries have nicknames, “The Emerald Isle”, “The Land of the Rising Sun”, and “The Great White North”.
Historically, royal families recycled a tiny pool of names to project continuity and legitimacy. France alone couldn’t get enough of Louis. They had 18 kings named Louis. Without last names or Roman numerals, a catchy—and often brutal—nickname was the only way to tell one monarch from another. Dynastic surnames like Plantagenet or Tudor or Capet were not used by contemporaries. Regnal numbers like "Henry II" only became standard practice around the 13th and 14th centuries. Henry II, (we’ll call him “Hank “ The Deuce”) ruled England from 1154 to 1189. Historians, chroniclers, friends and enemies relied on epithets to distinguish rulers and nobility. These titles generally came from three sources: political propaganda, physical descriptions, or later historical judgments. Names came from great deeds, infamy, physical traits and in the case of France, a surfeit of Louis’s so they needed to be differentiated. As for the common people, of course they got some too. For example, in the 12th century all male peasants were called “Jack”, although according to the Prosopography (now there’s a word for you) of Anglo-Saxon England, you could become acquainted with Siward the Sot, Alweard the Stumpy, or Gwilseth the Gleawbeorht. As we shall see with the nobility there were also many “the fats” and “the balds”.
A good name will wear out; a bad one may be turned; a nickname lasts forever.
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Some of the most famous titles with which we are familiar with were contemporary PR campaigns. "The Great" was frequently pushed by supporters, court historians, or the rulers themselves to project power and military success. History is replete with “the greats”. We have Alexander of Greece, (355 B.C – 322 B.C); Charlemagne the Great, King of Franks and Holy Roman Emperor (748-814); Cyrus the Great of Persia (580-529 BC); Genghis Khan, (Temujin) Mongol (1162-1227); Constantine the Great of Rome (272-337); Peter the Great of Russia (1672-1725); Catherine the Great of Russia (1729-1796) - that’s two “greats for Russia within 71 years. Of course, Russia also had Ivan “the Terrible” (1530-1584), no explanation needed. However, we award title the greatest of the greats to Akbar the Great (1542-1605) of the Mughal Empire because his name Akbar is a superlative meaning greater or greatest rendering him the name, basically “Greatest of the Great”.
Less superlative nicknames were applied by monks and chroniclers centuries after the monarch went kaput as a way to summarize a legacy. Often, these titles mutated over time. Sometimes it was not for the better. Consider poor English King Ethelred the Unready as a classic example. His title has nothing to do with being unprepared. In Old English, his name was Æthelred Unræd, which was deliberate pun meaning "noble counsel, poorly counseled." Over the centuries, the pun part was lost, and English speakers simply translated the unfortunate Ethelred’s name to "Unready."
Throughout history, people have been running around and conquering other cities and/or countries. Many of these chose to be named or were named “the conqueror”. For example, when he conquered England in 1066, the Norman duke, William the Bastard (1028-1087), became William the Conqueror and Mehmed II, (1432–1481) Sultan of the Ottoman Empire became, Mehmed the Conqueror after he captured Constantinople on 1453.
So, there are “Greats” and Conquerors, and now we shall examine the names of some other monarchs or nobles who were neither great nor conquerors. In Rome, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus gained the name “Caracalla” because he liked to wear a distinctive Gallic-style hooded cloak, a Caracalla. Caracalla was assassinated by his soldiers while urinating by the Syrian roadside in 217 A.D. No report as to whether he was wearing his hoodie. Claudius, (10 B.C – 54 A.D), succeeded his nephew the deranged emperor, Gaius Caesar aka Caligula, aka “Little Boot”, after his assassination at age 28 by the Praetorian Guard. Claudius (full name, Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus), was called, Claudius the Stammerer. Not to be outdone, centuries later France would have Louis the Stammerer. Stammering wasn’t Claudius’s only issue; he also had a severe limp and was partially deaf. Claudius invaded Britain in 43 A.D which brings our study to England where “Ethelred the Unready’s” son Edward became Edward the Confessor, (1003?-1066). He was the penultimate Anglo Saxon King of England and was cognemed (my word) thus because of his piety, not because he confessed to being on the grassy knoll in Dallas, or helping killing Jimmy Hoffa, or cheating at Dominoes. The Confessor started the whole William the Conqueror kerfuffle when he named Harold Godwinson as his successor even though he may already have promised the crown to a distant cousin, William, Duke of Normandy. William took umbrage, invaded England, defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and “The Bastard” became “The Conqueror”. Britain has given us quite a few famous and infamous nicknamables. We have Richard the Lionheart 1157-1199 who spent most of his life and reign involved in wars and fighting and very little involved in Kinging. He was very brave, albeit irresponsible, but “Lionheart” stuck rather than “the Negligent”. He spent only 6 months of his 10-year reign in England. If you watch all the movies and shows about Richard back-to-back, they may also add up to six months. And that leads us to Richard’s younger brother, King John of England, aka John Lackland. He was nicknamed Lackland because his father, Henry II bequeathed lands to his sons, Henry, Geoffrey, and Richard (Lionheart) and none to John boy, hence Lackland. John became King when Richard stupidly got himself shot by an arrow while attacking some minor castle in France. You’ll note that John has no number after his name. That’s because John was such a bad ruler, a disaster in fact, that there was never another King John for Britain which, of course, greatly saddens this author. At least John was Lackland. Queen Mary 1 has gone down in history labeled Bloody Mary. Mary (1516-1558) was the daughter of serial bridegroom Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Mary was Catholic and when she became Queen after the death of Edward VI, Henry’s teenage son in 1553, her advisors began taking reprisals and persecuting the Protestantism of Henry and Edward after those Protestants had persecuted Catholics when Henry broke with the Church. Over 300 people labeled heretics were burned at the stake during Mary’s brief (1553-1558) rule. At least she would have a drink named after her although competing stories involve a lovelorn Parisian patron, and a Chicago waitress at the Bucket of Blood Club. Bloody Mary was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth 1, The Virgin Queen, daughter of that serial bridegroom Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Despite centuries of speculation, there is no evidence that Elizabeth was not a virgin. The Protestants, you guessed it, took reprisals against the Catholics. Elizatheth, however, labeled Catholics “traitors” instead of heretics so they were not burned at the stake. They were not so humanely drawn and quartered instead. Ah, Christianity. Since the victors write history, the Elizabethans labeled Mary, “Bloody Mary” and so she remains.
Nicknames stick to people, and the most ridiculous are the most adhesive.
Thomas Chandler Haliburton
A century later, Oliver Cromwell and Parliament overthrew and executed King Charles I. Cromwell became “Lord Protector”. His son, Richard was not the man his father was. Not a military man nor a leader, he was labeled “Queen Dick”, or “Tumbledown Dick” and would be replaced by King Charles II. Meanwhile, looking back a few centuries in Scotland we find, Lulach the Simple Minded. Lulach was the stepson of Macbeth of Shakespeare fame and was King of Scots in 1057. The simple minded one, alternate nickname, “The Foolish” did not last a year when he was assassinated. His historical significance is that Lulach was the first king in Scotland for whom there are coronation details. Also in Scotland, in Galloway, ancestral home of the author, we call attention to Archibald the Grim who was the 3rd Earl of Douglas and Lord of Galloway from the mid 1300s until his death in 1400. It wasn’t that he was humorless, it was because his English enemies feared him. But not so much his son, Archibald the Loser who had a knack losing battles as well as an eye and a testicle to the English.
Crossing the channel to France and beyond, we encounter another John (yay!). King John II “The Good” (1350-1364). John was captured by the English at the Battle of Poitiers. We’re not sure why he was “the good” since he really didn’t do anything good other than losing battles, being captured by the English and being king during the Black Death. One of John the Good’s principal French enemies was Charles the Bad of Navarre. There will be more “the Bads” to come in our survey. Pepin “The Short”was Charlemagne’s father. Charlemagne is generally recognized as being about 6 ft. tall which was quite tall in those days. So how did “The Short” sire Charlemagne? As happened with Ethelred the Unready, it is a misnomer. He wasn’t short. Pepin’s Latin name was “Pippinus” or “Pippinidus” and “The Short” was a misinterpretation of “Pippinus,” which means “little Pippin”. That was lost on the early translators and poor Pepin morphed into “The Short”. Before long, the use of ‘the Short’ became too common to be corrected. Charles the Bald, 843-877, Charlemagne’s grandson was not bald he was in fact extremely hairy so………..France can’t get enough of Charles and Louis’s. Recall there were 10 Charles and 18 named Louis. So, we come to “Charles the Mad”, actually Charles VI (1368-1422). He was absolutely barking mad in fact. He suffered extended periods of insanity and believed he was made of glass. Earlier, we find Charles (III), the Simple”, (879-929 not because he was intellectually challenged but because, he was straightforward and honest so it is an honorific although we see Charles “the Simple and think…………There were a few Phillips too, six in all beginning with Phillip I “The Amorous” (1052-1108). Guess why. Sadly, Phillip II apparently had no nickname. Fast forward a few years to Philip III “The Bold” (1245-1285), youngest son of John “The Good”, (we like to name drop John) then along came Philip IV “The Fair” (1268-1314), so named because he was tall and blond. Then we have Philip V “The Tall”, 1293-1332), who was also tall, both stood over six feet. There was another John, “John the Posthumus”, so named because he was born posthumously after the death of his father Louis X “The Quarreler”, in November 1316 and then proceeded to die four days after his birth but he still gets credit as a king and any time we can mention a king named John, we go for it. Speaking of Louis X, (1289-1316), “the Quarreler”, aka “the Headstrong, or “the Stubborn”, so named because he feuded at one time or another with almost every member of the nobility. Louis II “the Stammerer” (877-874), son of Charles ‘the Bald”, stuttered his way through a brief 18-month reign. On the corpulent side we have, Holy Roman Emperor Charles III “Charles the Fat”, (839 -887). Charles is just one of a number of porcine rulers known by the epithet “the Fat,”. He is joined by Alfonso I of Portugal, Conan III of Brittany, Henry I of Navarre and Louis VI of France…. All “The Fat”.
Up north, they were very creative with the nicknames. We begin with “Eystein the Fart”. Eystein Halfdansson, was an 8th century king of Norway. The epithet “Fart” is usually believed to mean that he was a busybody or loudmouth, not his flatulence. No definitive explanation has yet been found, however. “The Fart” had a son, “Halfdan the Bad Entertainer”, also known as King Halfdan the Mild, His nickname apparently refers to his habit of paying his soldiers generously but providing them with little food or entertainment. Bad entertainer would now apply to the countless untalented people infesting television these days. Continuing with the Vikings, we meet Ivar “the Boneless “– Died, 873. Ivar was a Viking chieftain whose favorite pastime was invading and plundering England, Ireland and later, Scotland. Encyclopedia Brittanica informs us that the meaning of Ivar’s weird nickname is not known with any certainty. It might refer to a hereditary skeletal condition such as osteogenesis imperfecta or to an inability to walk. Lots of Viking in our bizarre nickname survey as we turn to Harald Fairhair (c. 860—died c. 940). Harold is recognized by medieval historians as the first king of Norway, reigning from 872 to 930. Why “Fairhair”? Harald refused to cut his hair until he was named king. This took about 10 years, so he probably looked like Rapunzel by the time he ascended the throne. Probably had a lot of cooties in that nest on top of his head also. Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson was a king of Denmark and Norway who reigned from 958 to 986. “Bluetooth” Gormsson did not invent a wireless system that allowed devices to exchange data over short distances but he did like to invade England. All Viking kings loved to invade Britain. Another Viking, ‘Eirik the Priest Hater’ was the King of Norway from 1280 until 1299. He was the eldest surviving son of King Magnus the Lawmender of Norway. Eirik received the nickname "Priest Hater" from his antagonistic relations with the church. Also, in Norway there was Ragnarr, a ninth-century Viking chieftain who (according to legend) killed a deadly serpent while wearing a pair of cowhide breeches. It would have been fitting that he be called Ragnarr the Serpent Slayer to honor his brave achievement but, alas, he has gone down in history as Ragnarr Hairy Pants instead.
Moving to Germany we find, another John. He was John II “the Babymaker”. He worked hard for his nickname as he allegedly fathered 63 illegitimate children. Hopefully, some were named John. John II, alas, was not a king but the Duke of Cleves, in northwestern Germany. His son, John III was the father of Anne of Cleves, the fourth wife of serial bridegroom, Henry VIII. Bordering Germany, in Austria we meet, Albert IV, “Albert the Peculiar”. He was a Duke from 1395 until 1404. It’s not immediately obvious why he was given the nickname of ‘peculiar,’ but he must have been. We do know about Ivaylo the Cabbage, Tsar of Bulgaria, who went kaput in died 1281. Legend has it he led a peasant uprising against the Tsar and because he was a peasant, Cabbage was a derogatory named bestowed on him by the nobility. He overthrew the Tsar and then amazingly defeated Genghis Khan’s Golden Horde……twice. His offspring were, naturally, Cabbage Patch Kids.
The Medici were a rich, influential and powerful family in Florence during the Renaissance. “Piero the Unfortunate” was the exception. Piero, (1474-1503), was ruler of Florence for two years from 1492-1494 following the death of his father, Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492). Piero cleverly cancelled an alliance with powerful France in favor of one with not so powerful Naples. Piero lost control of the city when the French invaded. He was then ousted from power when the people revolted and plundered the Medici Palace. As if that weren’t unfortunate enough, Piero eventually drowned crossing a river while fleeing from a battle in 1503. Another bad one, “William the Bad” of Sicily,( 1120–1166). The nobles hated him so they called him the “the bad”. His son, William II was more popular and was naturally labeled “The Good”. If William II the Good had a son named William III, we would hope he was named “William the Ugly” so we would have The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Back on the mainland, we encounter, Alphonso the Slobberer - King of León and Galicia (1188-1230). Allegedly he had fits of rage that had him foaming at the mouth thus discouraging aides and would be assassins from getting too close. On the leisure clothing front, we encounter, “Bermudo II the Gouty” King of León and Galicia, (953 – 999). Bermudo, who’s favored attire was Bermudo Shorts, ruled parts of Spain, fought Muslim invaders and died of you guessed it, Gout. Pity poor Henry IV of Castile (1425-1474) who has gone down in history as “Henry the Impotent.” Henry ruled the Spanish kingdom from 1454 to 1474. When he was fifteen, Henry was married to Blanche II of Navarre. Thirteen years later, Henry filed for divorce, stating that they had never consummated the marriage. The Catholic church held a trial, where they confirmed Blanche’s virginity and received testimony from several prostitutes who explained that Henry’s sexual prowess was just fine, except when it came to his wife. “Wilfred the Hairy” ruled as Count of Urgell and Cerdanya from 870, Barcelona, Girona, and Besalú from 878, and Ausona from 886. Visit the sculpture of Wilfred in the Cathedral of Barcelona and you’ll understand the nickname; the guy looks like he’s literally wearing a bodysuit made of hair. “Charles the Bewitched”(1661-1700) of Spain, was the product of centuries of Hapsburg inbreeding. He was ugly, deformed and smelly. Not surprisingly, he fathered no children. He did like to eat. Contemporary chroniclers describe a typical meal “He has a ravenous stomach, and swallows all he eats whole, for his nether jaw stands so much out, that his two rows of teeth cannot meet”. He went kaput at 38 labeled “the Bewitched” because of his poor health and inability to sire children. So, basically, in the words of Rogers and Hart, he was “bewitched, bothered and bewildered.” And how could we forget Vlad “the Impaler”, Prince of Wallachia, born in Transylvania, the inspiration for Dracula. His fondness for impaling his enemies on stakes in the ground and leaving them to die earned him his nickname.
Finally, we visit the, Byzantine Empire where we encounter the charming, Basil II, “the Bulgar Slayer” due to his penchant for conquering Bulgaria and other Baltic countries and slaughtering the populace. On the proboscis front we encounter, Justinian II, “the Slitnose” who was the Byzantine emperor from 685 to 695. Mr. Slitnose was a bit of a tyrant and quite unpopular and that led to rebellion by his general, Leonitis. Mutilation, specifically rhinectomy, was a common punishment in the Byzantine court and Justinian was captured and deposed and then, before a large crowd gathered for the event, was subjected to a rhinectomy (cutting off the nose) and glossotomia. slitting of the tongue. It was nothing to sniff at. Unfortunately for Leonitis, he too would be de-nosed a few years later. Meanwhile Justinian would regain the Imperial throne in 705 and for his second reign he now sported a golden prosthetic nose and became an even worse tyrant. Eventually the Byzantines rose against him again and Justinian’s own soldiers seized and beheaded him - golden nose and all. Still, it could be worse. Spare a thought for poor Constantine V of Byzantium (718-775) who had to rule his Mediterranean kingdom while wearing the name Constantine Copronymous, which means “Constantine Dung-Named.”
Nicknames have evolved over time and are still universal. It’s all nicknames all of the time if you think about it. They continue to be a popular way for people to refer to others. As we’ve indicated, people may go through more than one nickname during their lives. Who knows, there may even be a “Eystein the Fart” or “Wilfred the Hairy” out there somewhere.
Title photo – Charles the Peculiar.
Sources: No A.I ! Never.
https://www.medievalists.net/2023/05/the-10-strangest-nicknames-of-medieval-rulers/
https://timepieceshistory.com/2022/07/20/medieval-monarch-monikers/
https://www.ranker.com/list/leaders-known-as-the-great/renata-carmen
https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/53/1/150/151510/Henry-IV-of-Castile-1425-1474
https://www.scienceabc.com/social-science/why-is-pepin-called-the-short
https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/royalty/60-historys-strangest-royal-epithets
https://tswerplat.com/the-fascinating-history-and-enduring-popularity-of-nicknames/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/nickname
https://themediaevalmonk.wordpress.com/2021/07/27/interesting-early-medieval-english-nicknames/
