How do the kings and important figures in history get the titles?
score:7
Historians and the general public choose it. The term for these names are epithets. Specifically, the ones you mentioned are cognomens, since they go behind (or before) the given name. In contrast, a sobriquet replaces the proper name altoghther.
Like us normal people, important figures do not generally get to choose their own nicknames. Instead, it is usually invented by someone else and then bestowed on them. Some of these caught on, so to speak, and continues to be known today; though many have since vanished from public consciousness.
One way this happens is that a chronicler or historian created a nickname in their writings. For example, Infante Henrique of Portugal was styled"the navigator" in the writings of 19th century German historians, Heinrich Schaefer and Gustav de Veer. This nickname was then popularised by the British writers Henry Major and Raymond Beazley, becoming standard outside of Portugal.
Sometimes the nickname was bestowed out of political motivations. For example, Julian the Apostate received his epithet from the early Christian Church for abandoning Christianity. William the Wicked, a relatively benevolent king, seemed to have been a victim of his biased chronicler's hatred.
Alexander the Great may have gotten his epithet from the Romans, who slowly came to appreciate his achievements.
It took a long time before Alexander's greatness really came home to the Romans, although they were the people who, as far as we can tell, gave him the epithet 'the Great', and it took even longer before he made an impact on individual Romans. The earliest record we have of Alexander is in Plautus' Mostellaria, 775-7, where the slave Tranio brackets him with Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse: Alexandrum magnum atque Agathoclem aiunt maxumas
- Den Hengst, Danièel. Emperors and Historiography: Collected Essays on the Literature of the Roman Empire by Danièel Den Hengst. Vol. 319. Brill, 2010.
So in conclusion, the general public chooses these nicknames. But this does not have to be unanimous at all. In fact, some times people have multiple nicknames. For example, Louis XI of France has been called both "the Prudent" as well as "the Cunning", after his tight spending and intrigues, respectively.
More post
- 📝 Who revoked their signatures from the union agreement at the Council of Florence?
- 📝 What was the name of the father of Mesha, king of Moab?
- 📝 Vietnam war: did infantry really have to clear the way for tanks as depicted in "Full Metal Jacket"?
- 📝 How can we be sure that a certain historical claim is true and accurate?
- 📝 List of Roman Imperial Coins ~0 CE/AD
- 📝 How did the bride's family benefit from providing a large dowry in Renaissance Italy?
- 📝 When did the Hebrews stop speaking Hebrew and start speaking Aramaic?
- 📝 Did Democritus of Abdera, Thrace accuse the Jews of sacrificing Greeks in their religious rituals?
- 📝 What happened to all the Germans living east of the Oder?
- 📝 Did Gorbachev say that his intention was to destroy Communism?
- 📝 Why is Jackson's valley campaign considered a Confederate victory?
- 📝 Why is Richard I (The Lion-heart) considered to be a good king and Jean I a bad one?
- 📝 What were the expectations of a medieval castle or fortress hoping to break or outlast a siege?
- 📝 Did the citizens of US really back the declaration of war on Japanese Empire as it was implied by F.D. Roosevelt in his Pearl Harbor Speech?
- 📝 Is there a reason for a Queen's husband not to be referred to as King?
- 📝 Eastern Europe during middle ages, a world view
- 📝 How old is the day of 24 equal hours?
- 📝 Why did Napoleon divide his army during the retreat from Smolensk?
- 📝 How did Tenures Abolition Act of 1660 change feudalism in England?
- 📝 why Israel has not used its nuclear arsenal against hamas?
- 📝 What were the capabilities of a warhorse?
- 📝 Why would some nations want to force Japan to end their isolation?
- 📝 When did druids become widely accepted as 'shapeshifters'?
- 📝 Why did the UK allow India to be a republic rather than a democratic parliament under the British Monarch?
- 📝 What was the first health insurance company in America?
- 📝 Are there archaeological sites of Drusus‘ campaign 9 BC?
- 📝 Why was France given such a lenient peace after Napoleon was defeated?
- 📝 What's the point of the transept?
- 📝 Language used on a dagger hilt, supposedly of Persian provenance, ca. 1700-1750
- 📝 How did the Nuremberg Trials decide whether a guilty defendant was to be sentence to death or life imprisonment?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How do the kings and important figures in history get the titles?
- 📝 Is black American history only about segregation, slavery, and the 3 people you get taught about in school?
- 📝 How important were Einstein and Szilard and other scientists to the creation and ultimate success of the Manhattan Project?
- 📝 How accurate and balanced is Paul Johnson's 'A History of the Jews'?
- 📝 How important were reprints of scientific articles in scientific practice and communications before the the copier, the computer and the internet?
- 📝 How and when did Jews get to the shores of the Baltic?
- 📝 How did messages get back and forth between ship and shore during the Battle of Cherbourg?
- 📝 How could a prisoner get lessons to read, write and do mathematics in jail, while innocent people didn't get the basic knowledge in 18th-19th century?
- 📝 How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
- 📝 How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
- 📝 How did the USSR manage to innovate in an environment characterized by government censorship and high bureaucracy?
- 📝 When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
- 📝 How did Italy and Germany get rubber in WWII?
- 📝 How and when was the modern company ownership structure invented?
- 📝 How did Moscow become the capital/most important city in Russia?
- 📝 How were the cities of Milan and Bruges spared by the Black Death?
- 📝 How did the ruling class in the Muslim world react to the discovery and colonization of the Americas?
- 📝 How to explain the apparent discrepancy in the use of papyrus vs. clay tablets between Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia?
- 📝 How true is the statement "Soviet troops got into Berlin riding American trucks, walking in American boots and using American trains"?
- 📝 How many lives were estimated to have been saved by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs?
- 📝 How and why was the boundary between West and East Berlin decided to be where it was?
- 📝 When and how did the Han ethnic group become by far the biggest ethnic group in China?
- 📝 How was the modern geographic boundary between Europe and Asia decided?
- 📝 How long did it take for a diplomat to travel between Berlin and Vienna in the 1770's?
- 📝 How to identify this coin with a bust on one side and the letters S and C on the other side?
- 📝 How expensive were castles? And how were the costs distributed?
- 📝 How much did J. Robert Oppenheimer get paid while overseeing the Manhattan Project?
- 📝 How did Alexander III of Macedon get the title "the Great"?
- 📝 How long did it take to get news of the sighting of the Spanish Armada from Land’s End to London?
- 📝 How do Friedman and Bernanke's explanations about the causes of the Great Depression compare?