What’s in a Byname? Part 2

After surveying a variety of colorful bynames in last week’s column, we turn now to a narrow set of value-laden ones. As I hope you agree, dabbling in the history of these sobriquets is fun, but there’s also an opportunity here—a chance to reflect on our own aspirations.

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Many years ago, a historian named Hugh Brogan observed that Abraham Lincoln was both “good” and “great.”

We Americans typically don’t attach bynames to our presidents, but, had Lincoln been a king like, say, Alfred of England or Magnus of Norway and Denmark, we would have had to choose between those two adjectives.

From a distance, we might assume that the former is better than the latter. After all, a great game is always better than a good game, and who wouldn’t prefer a great meal to one that was only good?

When it comes to bynames, however, “the Good” is not merely a rung below “the Great.” When people have bestowed “the Good” on someone, they often have been responding to what we think of as qualities of what we sometimes call “character”: generosity, magnanimity, selflessness, virtue, wisdom.

Take, for example, Magnus the Good. The son of King Olaf II, Magnus became king of Norway in 1035 at the age of 11. Note these observations, first from the book Historical Tales and then from his entry in Britannica:

Magnus, as he grew up, showed an ugly and revengeful temper. Very likely some of those around him told the boy that he should avenge his father upon those who had rebelled against and killed him.

As a very young king, Magnus took his revenge on those chiefs who had fought against his father, but later in life he avoided such lawless behaviour, thereby earning the byname of “the Good.”

At first, it seems, Magnus, took the low road, lashing out against the enemies of his father, but he ultimately turned out to be a good guy. I give him extra points for cleaning up his act. In fact, I have to wonder whether this reversal is part of the reason for his byname. It’s as if those Norwegians and Danes said, “Right on, Maggie. Way to straighten up and fly right!” Then they threw away all their “Magnus the Jerk” T-shirts and became his advocates.

It’s almost enough to make me want to go on a bender of outright rascality for a week or two, just to see what kind of accolades I could rack up when I started holding the door for people again.

Just Plain Terrible—or Not

If Magnus had not seen the light, he might have wound up with one of those slurs that pass for bynames. I don’t know how much monarchs think about this kind of thing, but it’s fun to imagine Magnus flipping through a catalog of bynames, seeing pictures of Charles the Bad and Vlad the Impaler, and saying, “Nope, not for me. I want something a little brighter, something that puts a smile on people’s faces.” Now, if I had been around in the eleventh century and happened to be serving in the court of Norway, I would have advised Magnus to reach a little higher. Just imagine “Magnus the Magnanimous.” Now, there’s a byname for the ages.

Just as “the Good” is not always a step down from “the Great,” there’s some nuance on the other side of the scale. Consider Ivan the Terrible, one of the best-known czars of Russia. On first glance, you might assume that Ivan was an unqualified disaster, the kind of guy who makes Charles the Bad look like a golden boy. Maybe you picture him leaving his crown out in the rain, stiffing waiters, and insulting his kids’ kindergarten crafts while kicking the dog. Alfred the Great burned the cakes and came off as endearing, but Ivan the Terrible sounds like the kind of guy who burns the cakes and then pins them on his wife.

Like poor Æþelræd from last week, though, Ivan is the victim of inadequate translation. In Russia, he was known as “Ivan Grozny.” This byname has been translated as “courageous, magnificent, magisterial and keeping enemies in fear, but people in obedience.” Now, there was some questionable behavior involving something called the oprichnina, something that inspired this observation in his Britannica entry: “The entire episode of the oprichnina leaves a bloody imprint on Ivan’s reign, causing some doubts about his mental stability and leaving historians with the impression of a morbidly suspicious and vindictive ruler.” Hmm, maybe Ivan was at least a little bit Terrible.

Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down

If you’re like me, you’ve noticed an interesting gap here. We’ve seen the good and the bad, but nothing in between—no Catherine the So-So, Charlotte the Meh, or Peter the Take Him or Leave Him. It’s as if you have to make your mark, for better or worse, to earn a byname. Otherwise, you’re just not worth the trouble.

That’s kind of a shame, really. They say it’s good to be king, but being at the top is actually pretty hard work. Just running a campus, as I do, means having to make decisions based on incomplete information, alienating some people while pleasing others, and coping with factors and conditions over which the leader has little or no control. Leaders are judged by people who don’t (and often can’t) know everything the leader knows, yet they have to sustain enough support to maintain credibility and loyalty. Leaders are subject to the same human foibles as everyone else—biases, inconsistencies, and more—but we judge them much more harshly than we judge ourselves. Nowadays, they are under public scrutiny for everything they say and do in public, so they inevitably are going to face criticism for gaffs great and small.

Instead of separating these leaders into the Greats, the Goods, and the Bads, maybe we should acknowledge that many are just OK and that just being OK in light of the countless challenges they face is probably better than the rest of us could do.

The Great—According to Whom?

It’s worth asking whether some of these people really even deserved their bynames, especially “the Great.”  Take the most famous “Great” of them all: Alexander, the Macedonian (yes, Macedonian—technically not Greek) king who conquered a large swath of Asia before dying mysteriously in his early 30s.  There can be no doubt that he was great at conquering.  He conquered some 2 million square miles inhabited by perhaps as many as 35 million people.  He conquered more land than anyone of his era.  He conquered so well that Caesar, before his salad days, reportedly wept when he compared himself to Alexander.

Yes, Alexander was “Great” at conquering—far better than I could ever be—but then I don’t want to be great or good or even bad at conquering.  I don’t want to conquer at all because, if you ask me, there’s nothing great, good, or decent about conquering.  When people are minding their own business, who am I to intervene, to take control of their lives, to do anything other than maybe say hello as I’m passing through their land?

Someone decided that conquering people was great, so Alexander became “the Great.”  Alfred, on the other hand, saved his people from invading Vikings and promoted learning, and so someone else decided he was great. Greatness is in the eye of the beholder.

A Takeaway for the Rest of Us

Surveying the landscape of bynames, from the sublime to the ridiculous, can be great fun, but there’s an important takeaway here, one that could change your life.

Most us don’t have the satisfaction (or mortification) of seeing bynames attached to our given names, but the very notion of a single word summing up the most noteworthy thing about us can inspire us, even direct our actions.

In his famous self-help book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey encouraged us to “begin with the end in mind” and even invited us to think about how we would like to be remembered. I recall a high school assignment that called on us teenagers, still looking ahead to our adult lives, to write our own obituaries.

Imagining a byname for yourself is a less morbid, yet still useful exercise. Now, if you find yourself gravitating toward “the Impaler,” please seek psychiatric help. As for the rest of you, I encourage you to steer away from the most generic of bynames. Maybe you do want to be “Great,” but great at what?

We can imagine many inspiring bynames. Perhaps you would like people to know you as Gina the Advocate, Juan the Kind, or Letitia the Healer. The point is to choose something that you can aspire to be. That way, no matter how long your shanks, you can strive to fulfill your potential as a teacher, a servant leader, a nurturer, an organizer, whatever.

I have come up with one for myself. I am borrowing not from the world of monarchies, but from the equally colorful (and infinitely more constructive) realm of PBS Kids, home of Bob the Builder. Like beloved Bob, I can swing a hammer and indeed have left my stamp on a coffee table, various sets of bookshelves, a garden shed, and even a fully restored house on the National Register (oh, the stories I could tell about that one), but I’m thinking of a different kind of building.

As a longtime educator and writer, I like to build people. For me, words are even more powerful than nails and studs, and I cherish the opportunity to use them to teach, nurture, inform, and inspire my fellow human beings, so you can call me, if you wish, “Mark the Builder.”

What about you? How would you like to be known? What byname can you earn by becoming the best version of yourself?