What’s in a Byname?, Part 1

In one of his most famous soliloquies, William Shakespeare has Juliet ask, “What’s in a name?” This week, I’m asking a similar question, but about words attached to names. We call them “bynames,” and a survey of some notable ones is both hilarious and inspirational.

Before we get to that topic, let me mention that I have some talks coming up, and I hope some of you can join me for them. On May 13, on the Indiana University Kokomo campus, I will deliver “Benjamin Franklin and the Road to Revolution,” part of an America 250 series sponsored by the Howard County Historical Society. The following month, I will be at Indiana University’s Mini University, where I will deliver “American Founders in France” (with Chris Young) and “Undeclared: The Other Philadelphia.” See “Upcoming Lectures” on MindInclined.org for details, along with information about other lectures, as well as tours that Chris and I will be leading in Philadelphia and Paris.

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He was a military hero who doubled the size of his kingdom and later a leader known for his promotion of learning. On top of everything else, he had a cool name: Charlemagne.  That name is even more impressive when you know that it translates into English as Charles the Great.

His father, on the other hand, well, he was known as Pepin the Short.

Here, captured in a father and a son of the Middle Ages, is the blessing and the curse of the byname.

Are You Ready—or Unready—for These Medieval Bynames?

You probably are familiar with bynames, even if you didn’t know the term.  They sometimes get attached to the names of kings, queens, popes, and other people with more stature than most of us—or, in the case of Pepin, noticeably less stature. 

The people of medieval England kept a whole trunk full of bynames and handed them out liberally to their monarchs. Can you blame them? Why settle for plain old “Edward I” when you can call him “Edward Longshanks”? I mean, he was a towering 6 foot 2 inches tall, after all. Then there was Harold, who reigned over England from 1035 to 1040. Whatever skills he had as a ruler, he impressed someone with his blazing speed and hunting prowess, inspiring the byname “Harefoot.” Harold Harefoot died before the Norman Conquest in 1066, but that speed might have come in handy in running after (or maybe from) a certain Norman who eventually became king of England. The way he achieved the throne is right there in his byname, probably the most famous in English history. We know him as William the Conqueror.

For all their liberality with bynames, the English have been remarkably stingy with one found more commonly elsewhere. Of the some 60 English monarchs going back more than a millennium, only one is known as “the Great.”  If you have been reading Mind Travel for a while, you already know him: Alfred the Great, patron of the arts, savior of the kingdom, and famously feckless baker of cakes.

While they have kept that particular byname on a high shelf, the English haven’t minded dishing out bynames with considerably less luster, especially during the Middle Ages.  My favorite is the one attached to poor Æþelræd.  He became, for all time: Æþelræd the Unready.  The really sad part is that poor Ath was the victim of linguistic change.  In Old English, “Unræd” actually meant something like “poorly advised.”  That’s not so bad, right?  It wasn’t his fault that his counselors were numbskulls—or maybe they had some really brilliant advice and just kept it to themselves.  In any case, the modern word that stuck makes him sound embarrassingly green—like a Legion ball pitcher sent out to face Shohei Ohtani.  “Poor Athelred,” everyone not fluent in Old English will say for the rest of eternity, “he just wasn’t ready.”

Enduring Insults

At least Æþelræd wasn’t saddled with the byname attached to Charles II of Navarre. He was simply “the Bad.” Mind you, this is about 700 years before that was a compliment. He apparently earned that moniker for a number of reasons; my favorite is that he kept switching sides in the Hundred Years War. I’ve never been a king or, for that matter, a subject, but that does sound problematic. Then again, a hundred years is a long time to hold onto a single thought. He probably would have preferred Charles the Open-Minded.

The list of bynames has a host of other clunkers.  Along with “the Unready” and “the Bad,” we have “the Fat,” “the Unworthy,” and “Lackland.” That last one looks like a regular name, but it actually was a byname/nickname bestowed on the boy who would become England’s King John. His father, Henry II, employed this sobriquet (Sanz Terre in Norman French, Henry’s native language), a delightful reminder that little Johnny should not expect much of a land inheritance, since he had older brothers. (Thanks, Dad.) In one of history’s cases of self-fulfilling prophecies, John, after becoming king, went out and lost land in France, leaving us to wonder what might have happened if John’s father had had the foresight to name his son John Gainland or, even better, John World-Peacemaker. (Look, if words can conjure up realities, I say, aim high.)

Actually, England did have a king with a moniker along those latter lines, namely—or rather bynamely—Edgar the Peaceful. He reigned from 959 to 975, when the previously troublesome Vikings went to ground and the land was largely without major conflicts. Peace out, Ed.

To return to the insulting bynames, a Welsh king named Llywelyn may have actually been called “the Ugly.” I say “may” because the Welsh word in his byname was actually “Moel,” which also meant something like “bald,” although it was sometimes translated as “unattractive.” (I’m not judging, merely reporting.) Actually, if you have ever seen written Welsh, you know that the spelling is clearly a matter of anything goes. There’s a good chance that many of the words literally emerged from giant bowls of alphabet soup. Translators may have thrown up their hands and simply started winging it—or, as the Welsh would write, “wleywywng-ing it.”

One of the ugliest and, let’s admit it, most distinctive bynames is one attached to the name of a Romanian leader named Vlad.  That would be Vlad the Impaler.  You just have to wonder if he relished that byname—and thus was a real sicko—or considered himself merely misunderstood and went to great pains to clear his byname.  “Listen, I impaled a few guys (who deserved it, by the way), but I also bestowed on many others a much more merciful death.  Call me Vlad the Just.”

I can’t leave this topic without mentioning one more byname, surely one of the more colorful of all time: Ivar the Boneless. Go ahead and let your imagination run wild here. We actually don’t know how this Viking leader came to be called boneless: maybe he really was impaired with some kind of bone disease. Maybe he was remarkably adroit on the battlefield. In my research for this column, I came across both of these explanations, as well as one less suitable for a family publication. Whether his byname was a diagnosis, a compliment, a slur, or something else, it certainly is memorable.

Next time, we will turn to some more positive bynames and consider how we might use the whole notion of a byname as inspiration in our own lives.

In the meantime, I’m going to get to work learning Welsh. It seems like a good way to increase my Scrabble score.