Talk:Æthelred the Unready/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Favonian (talk) 13:51, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

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Æthelred the Unready → Ethelred the Unready – We should follow the Wikipedia convention to use people's common names. This sort of typographical ligature is no longer in everyday use in English. The present title is an awkward halfway house, being neither his common name using normal current English spelling, nor his actual contemporary name in Old English, which was Æþelræd. PatGallacher (talk) 13:46, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

• Comment. Oppose. [Clinched by remarks from Nortonius, below.–N] I hope that all articles incorporating ligatures will have redirects from forms that can actually be typed by real people. But the ligature "æ" (along with its capital) is meaningful in Old English. If the usual Old English form (they vary!) is indeed "Æþelræd" (see above), then there is a job of sorting out to do. It is, I believe, pretty standard not to preserve the "þ". Should "æ" be there if the "Æ" is kept? Not necessarily. For one thing, it is the initial letters that loom large in searching for and sorting such names (and see Google evidence below). WP:MOS says something on all this:

When quoting from early modern sources, normalize disused glyphs and ligatures to modern usage when doing so will not change or obscure the meaning of the text. Examples of such changes include the following: æ→ae, œ→oe, ſ→s, and ye→the.

That is about allowable typographical changes when quoting, but the recommendation might be extended to other situations too. Still, that is early modern sources. In the scholarly literature, when Old English names are used in any systematic way "æ" is definitely kept, and not reduced to "ae" or "e". This point is made in major contemporary style guides. Unfortunately Google ngrams cannot handle such ligatures; but this evidence may be useful in deciding between "Aethelraed", "Aethelred", and "Ethelred" (the three possible forms that avoid ligatures). Two cautions though: ngrams survey all literatures, not just what we might regard as "reliable sources"; and Wikipedia style should determine things (where it does make recommendations), not "reliable sources" alone.

Finally, here is a useful Googlebooks search on "Æþelræd" OR "Æthelræd" OR "Æthelred". Even bearing in mind that Google may not handle the ligatures well, among these options our current title vastly dominates in the literature, as we can see when it is removed from the search: "Æþelræd" OR "Æthelræd".

Noetica^Tea? 23:12, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. Modern reliable English-language sources in the secondary literature predominantly use the ligature in names of this type, and we should follow their example. For example: Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England; the Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England; Whitelock's English Historical Documents; Yorke's Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England; Swanton's Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Keynes' and Lapidge's Alfred the Great; Abels' Alfred the Great. The ones that don't use it almost invariably use "Ae": e.g. Campbell's The Anglo-Saxons, Kirby's Earliest English Kings. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:48, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose No offence to the proposer, but this sort of thing comes up fairly regularly, here, or at Cnut vs. Canute, etc. In modern terms the man's "common name" was Æthelred, according to modern RS as Mike Christie says, plus others (e.g. Ann Williams' Æthelred the Unready of 2003). Understood about his contemporaries calling him "Æþelræd", but they will also have called him "Æðelræd" and other variations. In that sense, as I understand it, modern usage of "Æthelred" already owes much to modern standardisation of spellings - we can only really spell his name one way, if we are to avoid confusion. Similarly we don't refer to Æthelthryth as "Æðelðryð", "Æðelþryð", "Eldreda" or "Audrey". Likewise Æthelstan, Æthelberht of Kent, Æthelbald of Mercia (where, incidentally, there's a wonderful illustration of variant, contemporary spellings, from a charter of 736, where his name is spelled "AETDILBALT" (possibly "AETĐILBALT", but it's unclear) - but no, we can't use that!), etc... "Ethelred" is comparable to "Audrey", since it is merely how the "common names" of the people concerned became corrupted over time. Also, there's already a re-direct for "Ethelred the Unready", and a disambiguation page for "Ethelred", so no reader can reasonably fail to find this article. I think that's how it should be. And, it's not for me to co-opt Noetica's comment above, but I see the information given there as contributing to an oppose. Thanks for reading. Nortonius (talk) 10:48, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

That's all very fair, Nortonius. Well elucidated. I am turning my comment into an oppose. Noetica^Tea? 12:20, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose As previous contributors have said, Æthelred is the most common academic usage. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:36, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
• Move to Ethelred II, per Britannica, World Encyclopedia, and Oxford's A Dictionary of World History. We are a reference for the general reader. The titles for these articles should be in a standard format for monarchs. We should not be following conventions specific to Anglo-Saxon specialists. Kauffner (talk) 21:23, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
• Comment Well I'm glad that somebody has confirmed that "Ethelred" is the version most often used by reference works. Let's deal with "II v. the Unready" separately from the issue of with or without the ligature. Whatever the merits of "Cnut v. Canute", at least both versions use the normal letters of the English alphabet. PatGallacher (talk) 22:29, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

A famous battle ?

In the section Conflict with the Danes the article currently says, "A period of six years then passed before, in 988, another coastal attack is recorded as having taken place to the south-west, though here a famous battle was fought between the invaders and the thegns of Devon" (my emphasis).
This is not encyclopedic. We shouldn't be saying, "a famous battle" without saying which battle it was, and if it is that famous why is there not a link to the Wikipedia article about it? I "think" the battle referred to was at Watchet, but that page says the raids took place in 987 and 997 not, as this article suggests in 988 so I'm not sure.
I found a link but I can't post it because the website is blacklisted, that seems to be the source of the above editor's information. It says the "huge battle" was in 988, that several Devon nobles were killed. Meanwhile, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says for the year 987, "This year was the port of Watchet plundered" and for the year 997, "Then went they up at Watchet, and there much evil wrought in burning and manslaughter" which would seem to suggest that if any "Devon nobles" were murdered (Watchet is not in Devon, but in Somerset) it would have been in 997 not in 987 or 988. Anglo-Saxon history is not my specialist subject so I might be wrong about which one it is but either way we can't just say, "a famous battle" and leave it at that. Cottonshirtτ 07:10, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Old English

I question the utility of having the lengthy passages in Old English. If the language is unintelligible to a majority of readers, why include it? Mikeroetto (talk) 18:26, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

The jury

I have forgotten where I read it (it may have been Keynes' book on the Diplomas, or Patrcik Wormald's on Making English Law), but I believe that the notion that the jury had its origins in the juridical practices of the Anglo-Saxons is now out of fashion. Also, as has been mentioned above, the fact that the "Grand Jury Handbook" is cited here is laughable.Eltheodigraeardgesece (talk) 15:09, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Haha, I'm still laughing about that one! (apologies to the editor responsible, but it is funny!) I suspect you're right about the jury issue - I've got Ann Williams' recent(ish) book right here, but the index is a bit too opaque for me to look it up right now. But I think the jury thing probably belongs in the same skip as the idea that King Alfred founded the royal navy... Cheers. Nortonius (talk) 16:54, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Might be worth having a proper look at Williams, Ann, Æthelred The Unready The Ill-Counselled King, Hambledon & London, 2003: a quick glance (p.57) found me "Edgar's Wihtbordesstan code ... ordered the establishment of ... panels of jurors' - not even Æthelred... But I've looked no further, so there might be something for or against - as I say it's got one of those annoyingly opaque indexes, where you have to check every page number listed to find what you want. Common practice, but tedious in the extreme. Though you can occasionally find interesting stuff that you weren't looking for that way... Cheers. Nortonius (talk) 00:54, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I have that. I'm off to bed now but I'll have a look tomorrow. Angus McLellan (Talk) 01:06, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Great - I wish there was always someone to pop up with a helpful offer like that! ;o) Any chance you could look something up in the EPNS Surrey volume?! Just being cheeky in a cheery sort of way, so don't worry, but it would be handy... Nortonius (talk) 01:19, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

No luck so far - all I can see is the part you quoted, which isn't really about juries - but I'll go through it again. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:52, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok - and, no indeed, talking of jurors is one thing, establishing juries as we understand them would be quite another! Cheers. Nortonius (talk) 22:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I should still prefer to give Wormald the last word in this. I will check his Making English Law next week. For now, this note in Williams' book is interesting, but I wonder if she isn't being uncareful with her terms: the word 'juror' is a vague term and has been used rather recklessly in the past in an attempt to equate Anglo-Saxon reeves and compurgators to Anglo-Norman juratores and jurati. I believe Maitland thought the jury stemmed from Frankish practices, while Jollife, in his The Constitutional History of Medieval England (3rd ed., 1954, p. 209), doesn't mention anything about forerunners to the Grand jury until his discussion of Henry II's Norman reforms of English law (suggesting 1166 as the very earliest date for such an (proto-)institution). I'll go read the Edgar code, and review the relevant part of the Ethelred code as well. I can probably dig up some recent articles on JSTOR too.Eltheodigraeardgesece (talk) 22:52, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

(undid indent)

Not sure Williams would be "uncareful" about anything, exactly - is she just reflecting current thinking? But you're the one digging into it, not me! ;o) Maybe a good idea for a new section for legal history, as it seems to be an issue - I'd just be careful not to make it unwieldy, & check that it isn't covered more fully under some more "legal" article - maybe you have? Admittedly I haven't thought about it for more than a millisecond, but isn't there at least a conceptual link between A-S jurors, & juries...? There's lots of subcutaneous continuity between A-S & A-N institutions, e.g. Domesday Book couldn't have been written w/o pre-existing A-S admin... Just thinking out loud, really, in case it helps. And, I'd be surprised if those Old English law codes aren't available in good, modern English translation somewhere...? EHD I...? Cheers. Nortonius (talk) 23:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

You're right. Shouldn't have said "uncareful". Perhaps she means 'jurors' in the basic sense 'people who have sworn an oath', in which case she would be perfectly accurate.Eltheodigraeardgesece (talk) 00:54, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Juries in some form probably go back to Roman times: it would be interesting to have an expert describe ordinary civil and criminal trial procedure in Roman 5th century. Certainly the Bretons had juries in the early middle ages. Work by Julia M. H. Harris and others presents the results of studying hundreds of legal documents from the reigns of Erispoe (849-857) and Salomon (857-874). It was standard practice for disputes to be taken to court - interesting examples include several of a peasant taking a local lord to task for trespass - the peasant won in each case. Sometimes cases were escalated to a higher court. In those that went to the Prince, he would choose an eminent panel who were sent to the place where the case originated to select a jury comprising peers to the disputants to try the case. Zoetropo (talk) 01:57, 12 August 2015 (UTC)