medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I am glad that the question of names has come up (thank you
Cate).
I myself have a tremendous problem with the issue of personal
names as I am editing my dissertation (the geographic names
are just as bad). This is for both modern and medieval
names. The question remains what do I chose for historical
accuracy and modern bibliography. It may be that it is a
tremendous problem for me since I work on the medieval
Spanish kingdoms, but I would think that other medieval
realms and city states would have this problem.
For example, a central person studied in my dissertation
is "Bernat Boyl." However, I have encountered eleven
different variants to his name in both medieval and modern
texts. There are at least six used in modern scholarship
just by modern Spanish scholars alone. Fidel Fita, for
example, uses four different variants in articles published
within two years. This is a bibliographic nightmare. I have
had important articles "pop-up" just on a lark of searching a
random variant, and tweaking the name by using a "y" or
an "i".
The same can be said for naming modern scholars, who change
their names when publishing their texts in different regions
and languages. I have scholars in Spain expanding or
contracting their surnames or changing their surnames to
correspond to the language of publication. This is also a
bibliographic nightmare if I am to list the works in
alphabetic order.
This is not to even go into the problem of translating names
into modern English, when they come from non-English
countries. For the life of me, I do not understand why I
should write James I for Jaume I when I do not write James
Vicens Vives for Jaume Vicens i Vives (or as he often used
Jaime Vicens Vives).
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