"WotR Rant" Topic

I've been reading alot recently about the WotR, and I have a pet peeve.

Calling the men by their title instead of their name.

I'm constantly having to stop and look up who the heck Exeter or Oxford or whoever is! I wish they would just use their names!!!

Don't worry about their actual names. All the histories talk about them by their titles. Think of the title as a surname, for example Richard Earl of Warwick. Yes he was a Neville but that doesn't really matter that much.

It's the same as Wellington. We all refer to him as Wellington rather than Arthur Wellesley.

There are too many Richards and Henrys and… due to the well known medieval supply shortage of first names

"Richard Earl of Warwick" instead of just "Warwick" uses up the word count too quickly (not a joke -if a historical research paper says "3000 words" it becomes a problem!!)

@20th Maine:
I quite agree.
At St Albans 1 (the first battle there) the Yorkists had THREE Richards and two of them were called Neville. Richard Neville senior was the Earl of Salisbury while Richard Neville junior was his son, the Earl of Warwick. The title is the easier way to go.

It is also the habit, even today, for people with titles to sign themselves as that title. Horatio Nelson signed himself as 'Bronte' after he was made the Duke of Bronte by the Italians while even the Bishop of Barking – who I once met – signed himself as (first name) plus 'Barking'.

Barry

A slight problem comes in when the title changes, of course: having to know and remember that Charles Count of Charolais was the same man as Charles the Bold Duke of Burgundy (to take a non-WotR example that springs immediately to mind).

My D Phil thesis involved trying to sort out all the Anglo Saxons who held land in 1066. Most by a first name only. Give me a title any day, or even a nickname!