The names by which we remember medieval figures are not always the names they were given. Some began as titles, descriptive nicknames or geographical labels, while others were shortened, translated or altered as they passed from one language to another.
In some cases, changes in language have also left familiar names conveying something quite different from their original meanings. This list examines 20 medieval figures and reveals the personal names, titles and linguistic transformations concealed behind the names used today.
1. Æthelred the Unready
King Æthelred II of England depicted in 14th century English genealogical roll – British Library Royal MS 14 B VI
The English king Æthelred II was not called “the Unready” during his lifetime. His personal name, Æthelred, combined Old English words meaning “noble” and “counsel.” Several generations after his death, an anonymous wit paired it with the noun unræd, meaning “bad counsel” or “a disastrous policy.” Æthelred Unræd was therefore a pun: “Noble Counsel, Bad Counsel.”
The earliest identifiable writer known to record the joke was Walter Map, who composed his De nugis curialium during the 1180s, roughly 170 years after Æthelred’s death. Map rendered the nickname in Latin as nullum consilium—“no counsel.” He almost certainly did not invent the pun, however; he was probably preserving one that was already circulating orally.
The mistake arose as unræd disappeared from English. Later readers encountered the similar adjective unready, which then meant “unprepared,” “inexperienced” or “poorly advised.” The unfamiliar noun was gradually replaced by the familiar adjective, turning “Æthelred of Bad Counsel” into Æthelred the Unready.
2. Chinggis Khan
Chinggis in a 14th-century Yuan era album; now located in the National Palace Museum, Taipei
The founder of the Mongol Empire was born Temüjin, not Chinggis Khan. According to The Secret History of the Mongols, his father, Yesügei, had recently captured a Tatar warrior called Temüjin-üge and gave the same name to his newborn son. Because the account was written after Chinggis Khan’s death, the story cannot be independently confirmed.
After Temüjin defeated his principal rivals and united the peoples of the Mongolian steppe, a great assembly, or quriltai, formally confirmed him as Chinggis Khan in 1206. Some traditions may place the title’s first use earlier, but 1206 marked its transformation into an imperial designation.
Khan meant ruler, while the meaning of Chinggis remains disputed. Scholars have connected it with strength, firmness or justice, and with tenggis, meaning “ocean.” That last theory produced the familiar translation “Universal Ruler,” based on the idea of an ocean encircling the world, but it should not be treated as certain.
The title passed into Persian as Chingiz and appeared in numerous Chinese, Arabic and European forms. English eventually settled on Genghis Khan, while many modern scholars prefer Chinggis Khan as a closer representation of the Mongolian pronunciation. To learn more, see What’s in a Name? Genghis vs Chinggis
3. Fibonacci
Monument of Leonardo da Pisa (Fibonacci), made by Giovanni Paganucci, completed in 1863, in the Camposanto di Pisa. Photo by Taty2007 / Wikimedia Commons
The mathematician who gave his name to one of the world’s most famous numerical sequences never called himself Fibonacci. In his writings he was Leonardo of Pisa—Leonardus Pisanus—and sometimes Leonardo Bigollo of Pisa. The uncertain word Bigollo has been interpreted as “traveller,” “wanderer,” “idler” or even “good-for-nothing.”
A Pisan document from 1240 calls him Leonardo Bigollo while granting him a salary for his services to the city. His own works also associate him with the Bonacci family, using expressions such as de filiis Bonacci. These meant something like “of the sons” or “of the family of Bonacci”; they were not the modern surname Fibonacci.
The contracted form was reportedly used by the Pisan notary Perizolo, who referred to “Lionardo Fibonacci” in 1506. The name remained obscure until the historian of mathematics Guillaume Libri used “Leonardo Fibonacci” in 1838 and helped establish it in modern scholarship.
Even the “Fibonacci sequence” is a later name. Leonardo used the numbers in Liber Abaci to solve a problem about breeding rabbits, but he neither named the sequence after himself nor claimed to have discovered it. The name now attached to both the mathematician and the sequence became familiar centuries after his death.
4. Lady Godiva
Lady Godiva by John Collier, c. 1897, in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry.
The historical woman behind Lady Godiva was named Godgifu, an Old English name meaning “God’s gift.” She was the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and a major landowner and religious patron in eleventh-century England. Contemporary and near-contemporary records remember her donations to churches and monasteries, not a naked ride through Coventry.
As her name entered Latin documents, Godgifu acquired spellings such as Godeva, the form found in the Domesday Book. Through the same gradual process it became Godiva. This was not a translation made by one identifiable writer, but a Latin documentary reshaping of an Old English name. “Lady” was another later addition rather than part of her personal name.
The story that made her famous was first recorded by the monk Roger of Wendover in the early thirteenth century, around 150 years after Godgifu’s death. Roger claimed that she rode naked through Coventry after Leofric promised to remove the town’s burdensome tolls if she did so. No surviving source from her own period mentions such an event.
5. Saladin
16th-century depiction of Saladin by Cristofano dell’Altissimo (1527–1605)
The ruler known throughout the West as Saladin was born Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb—Joseph, son of Ayyub. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn was an Arabic honorific, or laqab, meaning “Righteousness of the Faith,” “Integrity of the Faith” or “Uprightness of the Religion.” It was not the personal name given to him at birth.
Honorifics ending in al-Dīn, “of the Faith,” had become fashionable among the political and military elite of the medieval Islamic world. Yūsuf’s father was known as Najm al-Dīn, “Star of the Faith,” and his uncle as Asad al-Dīn, “Lion of the Faith.” Unfortunately, no surviving account securely identifies the person who first bestowed Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn upon Yūsuf.
Latin writers encountered the title during his rise to power in Egypt and Syria. William of Tyre, writing during Saladin’s lifetime, was among the earliest prominent Western chroniclers to use the Latin form Saladinus. Other spellings circulated, but Saladinus eventually produced the French and English Saladin.
6. Sandro Botticelli
Botticelli – Birth of Venus
The painter of The Birth of Venus was born Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi. “Sandro” was a familiar shortening of Alessandro, while Botticelli was not the surname he inherited from his father. The family name recorded in documents was Filipepi.
The nickname apparently originated with Sandro’s much older brother Giovanni, who was known as Botticello—“little barrel” or “small wine cask.” Whether this referred to Giovanni’s round build, his drinking habits or something entirely different is unknown. The name subsequently attached itself to Sandro in the slightly altered form Botticelli.
Giorgio Vasari provided another explanation in his sixteenth-century biography of the painter. He claimed that Sandro had been apprenticed to a goldsmith named Botticello and acquired the name from him. Vasari was writing decades after the artist’s death, however, and documentary evidence points instead towards the family nickname. A record from 1470 already calls the painter “Sandro Mariano Botticelli,” demonstrating that he had adopted it professionally.
Ivan IV of Russia was known in his own language as Ivan Groznyi. English conventionally translates this as Ivan “the Terrible,” but modern readers can easily misunderstand what the Russian word conveyed.
Groznyi was related to groza, a word associated with thunder, terror and dread. Applied to a ruler, it meant something closer to “formidable,” “awe-inspiring,” “menacing” or “the Dread.” It described someone who inspired fear and compelled obedience. The word could have negative implications, but it did not mean simply wicked, incompetent or personally dreadful in the modern English sense.
Nor was groznyi originally unique to Ivan IV. Medieval Russian writers could use it to describe imposing religious images and powerful rulers, including Ivan’s grandfather, Ivan III. It expressed an ideal of stern and intimidating authority as much as an assessment of individual character.
The epithet became increasingly attached to Ivan IV in Russian historical memory after his death. Western translators then selected “Terrible,” which was once a reasonable equivalent: English terrible could mean “causing terror” or “worthy of dread.” As the English word shifted towards its modern meaning of “very bad,” the translation became misleading.
Ivan’s brutal policies make the familiar nickname appear entirely appropriate, but that is partly a coincidence. “Ivan the Formidable” or “Ivan the Dread” would communicate the original political meaning more accurately.
8. Harald Bluetooth
A coin from King Harald Bluetooth, about 975 to 980″. Photographed just as it came out of the earth. Photo: Tobias Bondesson / Museum Vestsjælland
On the great runestone at Jelling, the Danish king identified himself simply as Haraldr konungr—“King Harald.” Medieval Latin records also called him Harald Gormsson, meaning Harald, son of Gorm. No surviving evidence from Harald’s own lifetime shows anyone calling him Bluetooth.
The nickname first appears around 150 years after his death in the anonymous Roskilde Chronicle, composed about 1140. Its author calls him Harald Blatan, representing the Old Norse Haraldr blátǫnn. A later twelfth-century writer rendered it as Blachtent and explained it in Latin as dens lividus vel niger—“a bluish or black tooth.”
This explanation may preserve the nickname’s original meaning, but it does not prove that Harald possessed a dead or diseased tooth. Old Norse blár could describe something dark, blue-black or livid, making “Dark Tooth” a potentially better translation. Other interpretations have been proposed, although none has displaced the traditional dental explanation.
The English translation became internationally famous in the 1990s, when engineer Jim Kardach proposed Bluetooth as a temporary name for a wireless standard intended to unite different electronic devices. The logo combined runes representing Harald’s initials, H and B.
9. Avicenna
Image of Ibn Sina, medieval manuscript entitled ‘Subtilties of Truth’, 1271
The Persian physician and philosopher known as Avicenna was Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā, normally shortened to Ibn Sīnā. The final element was an ancestral name: it connected him with an earlier member of his family called Sīnā. It was not the European-style surname “Avicenna.”
The familiar form emerged when Ibn Sīnā’s writings were translated into Latin during the twelfth century. His Arabic name appeared in intermediary forms such as Aven Sina, probably influenced by Romance or Hebrew renderings of ibn. Latin scribes then compressed and reshaped these sounds into Avicenna. In the Islamic world, however, the same scholar remained Ibn Sīnā and was also honoured as al-Shaykh al-Raʾīs—“the leading master.”
He is just one example of many Arabic writers whose name would be changed considerably by scholars in Europe.
10. Charles “the Simple”
Charles III depicted in the 17th century
The West Frankish king Charles III is remembered as Charles “the Simple,” a name that now makes him sound foolish or intellectually deficient. The original Latin description was more complicated.
The earliest writer known to apply simplex to Charles was Richer of Reims, writing near the end of the tenth century, several decades after the king’s death. Richer used it as an adjective rather than a fixed nickname, describing Charles as good in character and simplex—“straightforward,” “sincere” or “without duplicity.”
An eleventh-century chronicle from Saint-Bénigne likewise claimed that Charles was called Simplex because of the goodness of his spirit. These early uses could therefore present simplicity as a Christian and royal virtue: honesty, openness and freedom from deceit.
That was not the only medieval interpretation. Other chroniclers called Charles stultus, “stupid,” or used words meaning dull, foolish or witless. His enemies and their descendants had political reasons to portray the defeated Carolingian king as incompetent. Simplex consequently existed alongside a wider, considerably less flattering tradition.
When the Latin epithet entered French and English as “the Simple,” its positive meanings gradually receded. It came to suggest limited intelligence rather than guilelessness or sincerity. Charles may not have received an entirely complimentary nickname, but translating simplex simply as “stupid” distorts what its earliest identifiable user wrote.
11. Sei Shōnagon
Sei Shōnagon, illustration from an issue of Hyakunin Isshu (Edo period) – Wikimedia Commons
The author of The Pillow Book was almost certainly not personally named Sei Shōnagon. Like many women at Japan’s Heian court, she was known publicly by a designation constructed from her family and an official position rather than by the name given to her at birth.
Sei is the Chinese-derived reading of the first character in Kiyohara, her family name. Shōnagon meant “lesser counsellor,” an office in the imperial government. Court women were commonly identified through positions held by their fathers, husbands or other male relatives. Puzzlingly, none of her known close relatives held this particular office, so precisely why it was attached to her remains unknown.
The novelist Murasaki Shikibu provides one of the earliest surviving uses of the designation. Writing in her diary during the early eleventh century, she referred to Sei Shōnagon while delivering a famously hostile assessment of her character and learning. The name was therefore already established within a generation of the author’s court service.
Her personal name has been lost. Some scholars have proposed Kiyohara no Nagiko, but the evidence is not conclusive and the identification should not be stated as fact.
“Sei Shōnagon” is best understood as a court label meaning approximately “the Kiyohara lady associated with the lesser counsellor.” One of medieval Japan’s most recognisable literary personalities survives behind a name that may contain none of her private identity.
12. Tamerlane
Tamerlane from a 17th century depiction.
The conqueror remembered as Tamerlane was named Timur, a Turkic name meaning “iron.” He was also known as Amir Timur, while his court celebrated him as Ṣāḥib Qirān—the “Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction.” “Tamerlane” was neither his personal name nor a title he chose to advertise.
Timur had a disabled right leg and serious injuries to his right arm. The cause is uncertain. Hostile accounts claimed that he had been wounded while stealing sheep, whereas more favourable traditions attributed the injuries to battle. An examination of his remains in 1941 confirmed his physical disabilities but could not establish how he acquired them.
He consequently became known, particularly in hostile Persian tradition, as Timur-i Lang—“Timur the Lame.” The description diminished a ruler who carefully cultivated an image of extraordinary military ability and divinely favoured power.
As reports of his conquests travelled westward, European writers ran the words together. Timur-i Lang produced forms such as Tamurlan, Tamerlan and eventually Tamerlane. The Spanish ambassador Ruy González de Clavijo, who visited his court, instead called him Tamurbec—Timur Beg—demonstrating that the insulting epithet was not the only form in circulation.
Christopher Marlowe made the name famous in England through his enormously successful Tamburlaine plays of the 1580s. By then, a Persian description meaning “Timur the Lame” had become the conqueror’s apparent personal name.
13. Fra Angelico
Fra Angelico’s depiction of The Annunciation
The painter now known as Fra Angelico was born Guido di Pietro. After entering the Dominican Order at the convent of San Domenico in Fiesole, he adopted the religious name Fra Giovanni—“Brother John.” During his lifetime he was generally known as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole.
“Angelico” was not part of either his birth name or his monastic name. The earliest writer known to apply it to him was the Dominican Domenico da Corella, who called him angelicus pictor—“the angelic painter”—in a poem completed in 1469, fourteen years after the artist’s death. Corella was praising both the beauty of his religious paintings and the piety associated with his life.
The Florentine humanist Cristoforo Landino went further in 1481, placing the adjective directly beside his name and describing Fra Giovanni as angelico—“angelic.” Giorgio Vasari later made it a permanent part of the artist’s identity in his influential Lives of the Artists. The compliment gradually fused with his monastic title to produce Fra Angelico.
Another name, Beato Angelico—“Blessed Angelico”—became popular long before it possessed official standing. Pope John Paul II formally beatified him only in 1982.
The painter’s familiar identity was therefore assembled in stages. Guido became Giovanni when he entered religious life, and Fra Giovanni became Angelico through the admiration of writers after his death.
14. Almanzor
Statue of al-Mansur, also known as Almanzor, in Algeciras, Spain – photo by falconaumanni / Wikimedia Commons
The man known to Christian Europe as Almanzor was Abū ʿĀmir Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī ʿĀmir al-Maʿāfirī, usually shortened to Muhammad ibn Abi Amir. He was not the caliph of Córdoba, although he became the effective ruler of the caliphate while the young Hisham II remained its nominal sovereign.
In 981, Muhammad defeated his principal rival, the celebrated general Ghālib, and emerged as the dominant political and military figure in al-Andalus. Following that victory, he assumed the honorific al-Manṣūr bi-llāh. It meant “the One Made Victorious by God” or “the Victorious through God,” rather than simply “the Victorious.”
Unlike many medieval nicknames imposed by later chroniclers, this was a title Muhammad adopted to advertise his success and authority. It appeared in the public presentation of a ruler who exercised royal power without replacing the caliph whose government gave that power legitimacy.
Writers in the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula represented al-Manṣūr as Almanzor. The Arabic article al, meaning “the,” became inseparable from Manṣūr, while the pronunciation was adapted to local Romance languages.
As knowledge of Arabic diminished, Almanzor came to look like an ordinary personal name. It was neither his birth name nor a straightforward mistranslation. It was a Hispanicised Arabic victory title that eventually displaced the lengthy name of the man who had chosen it.
15. Skanderbeg
Portrait of Skanderbeg from 1466 in Palazzo Skanderbeg, Rome, Italy
Albania’s national hero was born Gjergj Kastrioti—George Kastrioti. His Christian name appears in a monastic document from 1426, while his later Italian correspondence rendered it as Giorgio and his Latin documents as Georgius. “Skanderbeg” was originally neither his first name nor his family name.
While serving the Ottoman Empire, Gjergj became known as İskender Bey. İskender was the Turkish form of Alexander, while bey was a title meaning “lord” or “commander.” It is generally understood as a comparison with Alexander the Great, although no surviving account identifies the individual who first bestowed it.
An Ottoman document from 1438 calls him Juvan-oğlu İskender Bey—“İskender Bey, son of John.” This shows that the title was already in official use several years before he broke with the Ottoman government in 1443.
Later biographies present a straightforward story in which Gjergj converted to Islam at the Ottoman court and then returned to Christianity. The surviving evidence is less complete than that narrative suggests. What is certain is that, after his rebellion, he publicly presented himself as a Christian ruler and defender of Albania while retaining his Ottoman name.
His official seal combined both identities as Georgius Castriotus Scanderbego. Italian and Latin writers compressed İskender Bey into Scanderbeg, while Albanian produced Skënderbej and Skënderbeu.
The name by which Europe remembers the great opponent of the Ottoman Empire was therefore itself an Ottoman title: “Lord Alexander.”
16. Babur — Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad
Babur depicted in the 17th century
The founder of the Mughal Empire was formally named Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad. According to a later family tradition, this imposing name was chosen by the influential Sufi teacher Khwāja Aḥrār. It was not, however, the name by which the prince became known.
Babur’s cousin, the historian Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥaydar Dughlat, claimed that the Chagatai Turks found Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad difficult to pronounce and consequently called him Bābur instead. That explanation may be partly anecdotal, but the shorter name was unquestionably embraced by Babur himself and became inseparable from his public identity.
Even its meaning is uncertain. Bābur has traditionally been connected with the Persian word babr, meaning “tiger” or “panther”—an appropriately warlike name for a conquering prince. Some modern scholars have instead proposed that it is related to an older Indo-European word for “beaver.” “Babur the Tiger” may therefore be an attractive interpretation rather than an established translation.
His celebrated memoir is now universally called the Bāburnāma, or “Book of Babur,” but that title was probably attached to it after his death. Babur himself may have called it simply the Waqāʾiʿ, meaning “Events” or “Record of Events,” although its original title remains disputed. The familiar name Babur thus belongs to both the man and his book—but neither began with precisely the identity by which it is remembered today.
17. Shajar al-Durr
Modern depiction of Shajar al-Durr, by StoriaGold / Deviant Art
The woman who ruled Egypt briefly in 1250 is remembered as Shajar al-Durr, but this was almost certainly not the name she received at birth. Her origins are obscure: medieval sources describe her as having been enslaved, and modern historians have variously suggested Turkic or Armenian ancestry. Her original personal name was never recorded.
The fuller form of her adopted name was Shajarat al-Durr, meaning “Tree of Pearls.” Shajar al-Durr is a shortened form commonly used in modern writing. Such ornate names were frequently given to enslaved women in elite households, but no surviving source tells us who selected hers or exactly when she received it. Claims that a particular master bestowed it upon her therefore go beyond the evidence.
After becoming the companion and then wife of the Ayyubid sultan al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb, she gave birth to a son named Khalil. This provided her with another identity: Umm Khalil, “mother of Khalil,” or Wālidat Khalil, with essentially the same meaning.
When she assumed power, she used these names to establish her legitimacy. Her decrees were signed Wālidat Khalil, while her coins carried Shajarat al-Durr alongside titles proclaiming her queen of the Muslims and mother of Khalil. The personal name with which she had been born disappeared completely. What survives is an ornamental household name transformed, through her own political skill, into the name of a sovereign.
18. Charlemagne
Albrecht Dürer’s depiction of Charlemagne
Charlemagne was not baptised Charlemagne. His name was Karl—or Charles in its later French and English form—and Latin writers rendered it as Carolus or Karolus. “Charlemagne” developed from an epithet meaning simply “Charles the Great.”
The Latin adjective magnus, meaning “great,” was associated with Charles at an early date. The Royal Frankish Annals sometimes describe him as Carolus magnus rex, although the phrase can be understood as “Charles, the great king” rather than necessarily as a permanent nickname. In the generations following his death, Carolus Magnus became an increasingly fixed way of distinguishing and glorifying him.
In medieval French, the same idea was expressed as Charles le Magne. Here magne was an inherited form of the Latin magnus. As the title was repeatedly written and spoken, its separate elements eventually fused: Charles le Magne became Charlemagne. English then borrowed the French form.
19. Averroes
Averroes depicted in a 14th-century painting by Andrea di Bonaiuto
The philosopher known in Europe as Averroes was named Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Rushd. In Arabic he is normally called Ibn Rushd, meaning “son of Rushd.” He was also sometimes distinguished as Ibn Rushd al-Ḥafīd—“Ibn Rushd the Grandson”—because his grandfather had been a prominent jurist with a very similar name.
His transformation into Averroes occurred as his writings travelled from Islamic Spain into the Latin-speaking universities of Europe. Medieval translators and scribes attempted to represent Ibn Rushd using Latin letters, often through the pronunciation and spelling conventions of Andalusi Arabic and the Romance languages of Iberia. The result appeared in numerous forms, including Avenrois, Averrois and Averroës.
In the medieval universities, Averroes became so authoritative that he was frequently called simply “the Commentator,” just as Aristotle was “the Philosopher.” Later thinkers identified with his interpretations were labelled Averroists.
20. El Cid
El Cid’s personal name was Rodrigo Díaz. He is conventionally called Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar because of his association with Vivar, near Burgos, but “de Vivar” functioned as a geographical description rather than a hereditary surname in the modern sense.
During his lifetime, Rodrigo was also described as Campidoctor, a Latinised title related to the later Spanish Campeador. Its exact shade of meaning is debated, but it suggested a master, champion or exceptionally skilled commander of the battlefield. Unlike many supposedly medieval nicknames, this one is documented in records produced while Rodrigo was still alive.
“Cid” had a different origin. It developed from the Andalusi Arabic sīdī, meaning “my lord” and related to the Arabic sayyid. We do not know who first addressed Rodrigo in this way. It is often said that the title was given to him by his Muslim followers or enemies, but the evidence does not allow us to identify either a particular speaker or a particular occasion. It could have circulated among people from several religious communities in the multilingual society of medieval Iberia.
One of the earliest surviving written appearances occurs in the mid-twelfth-century Poem of Almería, which remembers him as Rodericus, Meo Cidi saepe vocatus—“Rodrigo, often called My Cid.” The later Cantar de mio Cid made that form famous.
El Cid therefore means approximately “the Lord,” while Mio Cid means “my lord.” The name by which Rodrigo is now universally remembered is a Spanish expression built around an Arabic title.
The names by which we remember medieval figures were shaped by many hands. Some began as titles or affectionate nicknames, while others were translated, Latinised, shortened or altered as they passed between languages. In several cases, the person’s original name has been eclipsed entirely.
These transformations are not merely linguistic curiosities. Names could celebrate victories, advertise authority, ridicule an enemy or make an unfamiliar figure easier for foreign audiences to understand. Unravelling them brings us closer to the people behind the familiar labels—and reveals how much of the medieval past has reached us through the words chosen by later generations.
Top Image: Æthelred the Unready depicted in the thirteenth-century Chronicle of Abingdon. British Library, Cotton MS Claudius B VI, fol. 87v
The names by which we remember medieval figures are not always the names they were given. Some began as titles, descriptive nicknames or geographical labels, while others were shortened, translated or altered as they passed from one language to another.
In some cases, changes in language have also left familiar names conveying something quite different from their original meanings. This list examines 20 medieval figures and reveals the personal names, titles and linguistic transformations concealed behind the names used today.
1. Æthelred the Unready
The English king Æthelred II was not called “the Unready” during his lifetime. His personal name, Æthelred, combined Old English words meaning “noble” and “counsel.” Several generations after his death, an anonymous wit paired it with the noun unræd, meaning “bad counsel” or “a disastrous policy.” Æthelred Unræd was therefore a pun: “Noble Counsel, Bad Counsel.”
The earliest identifiable writer known to record the joke was Walter Map, who composed his De nugis curialium during the 1180s, roughly 170 years after Æthelred’s death. Map rendered the nickname in Latin as nullum consilium—“no counsel.” He almost certainly did not invent the pun, however; he was probably preserving one that was already circulating orally.
The mistake arose as unræd disappeared from English. Later readers encountered the similar adjective unready, which then meant “unprepared,” “inexperienced” or “poorly advised.” The unfamiliar noun was gradually replaced by the familiar adjective, turning “Æthelred of Bad Counsel” into Æthelred the Unready.
2. Chinggis Khan
The founder of the Mongol Empire was born Temüjin, not Chinggis Khan. According to The Secret History of the Mongols, his father, Yesügei, had recently captured a Tatar warrior called Temüjin-üge and gave the same name to his newborn son. Because the account was written after Chinggis Khan’s death, the story cannot be independently confirmed.
After Temüjin defeated his principal rivals and united the peoples of the Mongolian steppe, a great assembly, or quriltai, formally confirmed him as Chinggis Khan in 1206. Some traditions may place the title’s first use earlier, but 1206 marked its transformation into an imperial designation.
Khan meant ruler, while the meaning of Chinggis remains disputed. Scholars have connected it with strength, firmness or justice, and with tenggis, meaning “ocean.” That last theory produced the familiar translation “Universal Ruler,” based on the idea of an ocean encircling the world, but it should not be treated as certain.
The title passed into Persian as Chingiz and appeared in numerous Chinese, Arabic and European forms. English eventually settled on Genghis Khan, while many modern scholars prefer Chinggis Khan as a closer representation of the Mongolian pronunciation. To learn more, see What’s in a Name? Genghis vs Chinggis
3. Fibonacci
The mathematician who gave his name to one of the world’s most famous numerical sequences never called himself Fibonacci. In his writings he was Leonardo of Pisa—Leonardus Pisanus—and sometimes Leonardo Bigollo of Pisa. The uncertain word Bigollo has been interpreted as “traveller,” “wanderer,” “idler” or even “good-for-nothing.”
A Pisan document from 1240 calls him Leonardo Bigollo while granting him a salary for his services to the city. His own works also associate him with the Bonacci family, using expressions such as de filiis Bonacci. These meant something like “of the sons” or “of the family of Bonacci”; they were not the modern surname Fibonacci.
The contracted form was reportedly used by the Pisan notary Perizolo, who referred to “Lionardo Fibonacci” in 1506. The name remained obscure until the historian of mathematics Guillaume Libri used “Leonardo Fibonacci” in 1838 and helped establish it in modern scholarship.
Even the “Fibonacci sequence” is a later name. Leonardo used the numbers in Liber Abaci to solve a problem about breeding rabbits, but he neither named the sequence after himself nor claimed to have discovered it. The name now attached to both the mathematician and the sequence became familiar centuries after his death.
4. Lady Godiva
The historical woman behind Lady Godiva was named Godgifu, an Old English name meaning “God’s gift.” She was the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and a major landowner and religious patron in eleventh-century England. Contemporary and near-contemporary records remember her donations to churches and monasteries, not a naked ride through Coventry.
As her name entered Latin documents, Godgifu acquired spellings such as Godeva, the form found in the Domesday Book. Through the same gradual process it became Godiva. This was not a translation made by one identifiable writer, but a Latin documentary reshaping of an Old English name. “Lady” was another later addition rather than part of her personal name.
The story that made her famous was first recorded by the monk Roger of Wendover in the early thirteenth century, around 150 years after Godgifu’s death. Roger claimed that she rode naked through Coventry after Leofric promised to remove the town’s burdensome tolls if she did so. No surviving source from her own period mentions such an event.
5. Saladin
The ruler known throughout the West as Saladin was born Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb—Joseph, son of Ayyub. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn was an Arabic honorific, or laqab, meaning “Righteousness of the Faith,” “Integrity of the Faith” or “Uprightness of the Religion.” It was not the personal name given to him at birth.
Honorifics ending in al-Dīn, “of the Faith,” had become fashionable among the political and military elite of the medieval Islamic world. Yūsuf’s father was known as Najm al-Dīn, “Star of the Faith,” and his uncle as Asad al-Dīn, “Lion of the Faith.” Unfortunately, no surviving account securely identifies the person who first bestowed Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn upon Yūsuf.
Latin writers encountered the title during his rise to power in Egypt and Syria. William of Tyre, writing during Saladin’s lifetime, was among the earliest prominent Western chroniclers to use the Latin form Saladinus. Other spellings circulated, but Saladinus eventually produced the French and English Saladin.
6. Sandro Botticelli
The painter of The Birth of Venus was born Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi. “Sandro” was a familiar shortening of Alessandro, while Botticelli was not the surname he inherited from his father. The family name recorded in documents was Filipepi.
The nickname apparently originated with Sandro’s much older brother Giovanni, who was known as Botticello—“little barrel” or “small wine cask.” Whether this referred to Giovanni’s round build, his drinking habits or something entirely different is unknown. The name subsequently attached itself to Sandro in the slightly altered form Botticelli.
Giorgio Vasari provided another explanation in his sixteenth-century biography of the painter. He claimed that Sandro had been apprenticed to a goldsmith named Botticello and acquired the name from him. Vasari was writing decades after the artist’s death, however, and documentary evidence points instead towards the family nickname. A record from 1470 already calls the painter “Sandro Mariano Botticelli,” demonstrating that he had adopted it professionally.
To learn more about this artist, check out our mini-course: Botticelli: A Medieval and Renaissance Artist
7. Ivan “the Terrible”
Ivan IV of Russia was known in his own language as Ivan Groznyi. English conventionally translates this as Ivan “the Terrible,” but modern readers can easily misunderstand what the Russian word conveyed.
Groznyi was related to groza, a word associated with thunder, terror and dread. Applied to a ruler, it meant something closer to “formidable,” “awe-inspiring,” “menacing” or “the Dread.” It described someone who inspired fear and compelled obedience. The word could have negative implications, but it did not mean simply wicked, incompetent or personally dreadful in the modern English sense.
Nor was groznyi originally unique to Ivan IV. Medieval Russian writers could use it to describe imposing religious images and powerful rulers, including Ivan’s grandfather, Ivan III. It expressed an ideal of stern and intimidating authority as much as an assessment of individual character.
The epithet became increasingly attached to Ivan IV in Russian historical memory after his death. Western translators then selected “Terrible,” which was once a reasonable equivalent: English terrible could mean “causing terror” or “worthy of dread.” As the English word shifted towards its modern meaning of “very bad,” the translation became misleading.
Ivan’s brutal policies make the familiar nickname appear entirely appropriate, but that is partly a coincidence. “Ivan the Formidable” or “Ivan the Dread” would communicate the original political meaning more accurately.
8. Harald Bluetooth
On the great runestone at Jelling, the Danish king identified himself simply as Haraldr konungr—“King Harald.” Medieval Latin records also called him Harald Gormsson, meaning Harald, son of Gorm. No surviving evidence from Harald’s own lifetime shows anyone calling him Bluetooth.
The nickname first appears around 150 years after his death in the anonymous Roskilde Chronicle, composed about 1140. Its author calls him Harald Blatan, representing the Old Norse Haraldr blátǫnn. A later twelfth-century writer rendered it as Blachtent and explained it in Latin as dens lividus vel niger—“a bluish or black tooth.”
This explanation may preserve the nickname’s original meaning, but it does not prove that Harald possessed a dead or diseased tooth. Old Norse blár could describe something dark, blue-black or livid, making “Dark Tooth” a potentially better translation. Other interpretations have been proposed, although none has displaced the traditional dental explanation.
The English translation became internationally famous in the 1990s, when engineer Jim Kardach proposed Bluetooth as a temporary name for a wireless standard intended to unite different electronic devices. The logo combined runes representing Harald’s initials, H and B.
9. Avicenna
The Persian physician and philosopher known as Avicenna was Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā, normally shortened to Ibn Sīnā. The final element was an ancestral name: it connected him with an earlier member of his family called Sīnā. It was not the European-style surname “Avicenna.”
The familiar form emerged when Ibn Sīnā’s writings were translated into Latin during the twelfth century. His Arabic name appeared in intermediary forms such as Aven Sina, probably influenced by Romance or Hebrew renderings of ibn. Latin scribes then compressed and reshaped these sounds into Avicenna. In the Islamic world, however, the same scholar remained Ibn Sīnā and was also honoured as al-Shaykh al-Raʾīs—“the leading master.”
He is just one example of many Arabic writers whose name would be changed considerably by scholars in Europe.
10. Charles “the Simple”
The West Frankish king Charles III is remembered as Charles “the Simple,” a name that now makes him sound foolish or intellectually deficient. The original Latin description was more complicated.
The earliest writer known to apply simplex to Charles was Richer of Reims, writing near the end of the tenth century, several decades after the king’s death. Richer used it as an adjective rather than a fixed nickname, describing Charles as good in character and simplex—“straightforward,” “sincere” or “without duplicity.”
An eleventh-century chronicle from Saint-Bénigne likewise claimed that Charles was called Simplex because of the goodness of his spirit. These early uses could therefore present simplicity as a Christian and royal virtue: honesty, openness and freedom from deceit.
That was not the only medieval interpretation. Other chroniclers called Charles stultus, “stupid,” or used words meaning dull, foolish or witless. His enemies and their descendants had political reasons to portray the defeated Carolingian king as incompetent. Simplex consequently existed alongside a wider, considerably less flattering tradition.
When the Latin epithet entered French and English as “the Simple,” its positive meanings gradually receded. It came to suggest limited intelligence rather than guilelessness or sincerity. Charles may not have received an entirely complimentary nickname, but translating simplex simply as “stupid” distorts what its earliest identifiable user wrote.
11. Sei Shōnagon
The author of The Pillow Book was almost certainly not personally named Sei Shōnagon. Like many women at Japan’s Heian court, she was known publicly by a designation constructed from her family and an official position rather than by the name given to her at birth.
Sei is the Chinese-derived reading of the first character in Kiyohara, her family name. Shōnagon meant “lesser counsellor,” an office in the imperial government. Court women were commonly identified through positions held by their fathers, husbands or other male relatives. Puzzlingly, none of her known close relatives held this particular office, so precisely why it was attached to her remains unknown.
The novelist Murasaki Shikibu provides one of the earliest surviving uses of the designation. Writing in her diary during the early eleventh century, she referred to Sei Shōnagon while delivering a famously hostile assessment of her character and learning. The name was therefore already established within a generation of the author’s court service.
Her personal name has been lost. Some scholars have proposed Kiyohara no Nagiko, but the evidence is not conclusive and the identification should not be stated as fact.
“Sei Shōnagon” is best understood as a court label meaning approximately “the Kiyohara lady associated with the lesser counsellor.” One of medieval Japan’s most recognisable literary personalities survives behind a name that may contain none of her private identity.
12. Tamerlane
The conqueror remembered as Tamerlane was named Timur, a Turkic name meaning “iron.” He was also known as Amir Timur, while his court celebrated him as Ṣāḥib Qirān—the “Lord of the Auspicious Conjunction.” “Tamerlane” was neither his personal name nor a title he chose to advertise.
Timur had a disabled right leg and serious injuries to his right arm. The cause is uncertain. Hostile accounts claimed that he had been wounded while stealing sheep, whereas more favourable traditions attributed the injuries to battle. An examination of his remains in 1941 confirmed his physical disabilities but could not establish how he acquired them.
He consequently became known, particularly in hostile Persian tradition, as Timur-i Lang—“Timur the Lame.” The description diminished a ruler who carefully cultivated an image of extraordinary military ability and divinely favoured power.
As reports of his conquests travelled westward, European writers ran the words together. Timur-i Lang produced forms such as Tamurlan, Tamerlan and eventually Tamerlane. The Spanish ambassador Ruy González de Clavijo, who visited his court, instead called him Tamurbec—Timur Beg—demonstrating that the insulting epithet was not the only form in circulation.
Christopher Marlowe made the name famous in England through his enormously successful Tamburlaine plays of the 1580s. By then, a Persian description meaning “Timur the Lame” had become the conqueror’s apparent personal name.
13. Fra Angelico
The painter now known as Fra Angelico was born Guido di Pietro. After entering the Dominican Order at the convent of San Domenico in Fiesole, he adopted the religious name Fra Giovanni—“Brother John.” During his lifetime he was generally known as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole.
“Angelico” was not part of either his birth name or his monastic name. The earliest writer known to apply it to him was the Dominican Domenico da Corella, who called him angelicus pictor—“the angelic painter”—in a poem completed in 1469, fourteen years after the artist’s death. Corella was praising both the beauty of his religious paintings and the piety associated with his life.
The Florentine humanist Cristoforo Landino went further in 1481, placing the adjective directly beside his name and describing Fra Giovanni as angelico—“angelic.” Giorgio Vasari later made it a permanent part of the artist’s identity in his influential Lives of the Artists. The compliment gradually fused with his monastic title to produce Fra Angelico.
Another name, Beato Angelico—“Blessed Angelico”—became popular long before it possessed official standing. Pope John Paul II formally beatified him only in 1982.
The painter’s familiar identity was therefore assembled in stages. Guido became Giovanni when he entered religious life, and Fra Giovanni became Angelico through the admiration of writers after his death.
14. Almanzor
The man known to Christian Europe as Almanzor was Abū ʿĀmir Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī ʿĀmir al-Maʿāfirī, usually shortened to Muhammad ibn Abi Amir. He was not the caliph of Córdoba, although he became the effective ruler of the caliphate while the young Hisham II remained its nominal sovereign.
In 981, Muhammad defeated his principal rival, the celebrated general Ghālib, and emerged as the dominant political and military figure in al-Andalus. Following that victory, he assumed the honorific al-Manṣūr bi-llāh. It meant “the One Made Victorious by God” or “the Victorious through God,” rather than simply “the Victorious.”
Unlike many medieval nicknames imposed by later chroniclers, this was a title Muhammad adopted to advertise his success and authority. It appeared in the public presentation of a ruler who exercised royal power without replacing the caliph whose government gave that power legitimacy.
Writers in the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula represented al-Manṣūr as Almanzor. The Arabic article al, meaning “the,” became inseparable from Manṣūr, while the pronunciation was adapted to local Romance languages.
As knowledge of Arabic diminished, Almanzor came to look like an ordinary personal name. It was neither his birth name nor a straightforward mistranslation. It was a Hispanicised Arabic victory title that eventually displaced the lengthy name of the man who had chosen it.
15. Skanderbeg
Albania’s national hero was born Gjergj Kastrioti—George Kastrioti. His Christian name appears in a monastic document from 1426, while his later Italian correspondence rendered it as Giorgio and his Latin documents as Georgius. “Skanderbeg” was originally neither his first name nor his family name.
While serving the Ottoman Empire, Gjergj became known as İskender Bey. İskender was the Turkish form of Alexander, while bey was a title meaning “lord” or “commander.” It is generally understood as a comparison with Alexander the Great, although no surviving account identifies the individual who first bestowed it.
An Ottoman document from 1438 calls him Juvan-oğlu İskender Bey—“İskender Bey, son of John.” This shows that the title was already in official use several years before he broke with the Ottoman government in 1443.
Later biographies present a straightforward story in which Gjergj converted to Islam at the Ottoman court and then returned to Christianity. The surviving evidence is less complete than that narrative suggests. What is certain is that, after his rebellion, he publicly presented himself as a Christian ruler and defender of Albania while retaining his Ottoman name.
His official seal combined both identities as Georgius Castriotus Scanderbego. Italian and Latin writers compressed İskender Bey into Scanderbeg, while Albanian produced Skënderbej and Skënderbeu.
The name by which Europe remembers the great opponent of the Ottoman Empire was therefore itself an Ottoman title: “Lord Alexander.”
16. Babur — Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad
The founder of the Mughal Empire was formally named Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad. According to a later family tradition, this imposing name was chosen by the influential Sufi teacher Khwāja Aḥrār. It was not, however, the name by which the prince became known.
Babur’s cousin, the historian Mīrzā Muḥammad Ḥaydar Dughlat, claimed that the Chagatai Turks found Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad difficult to pronounce and consequently called him Bābur instead. That explanation may be partly anecdotal, but the shorter name was unquestionably embraced by Babur himself and became inseparable from his public identity.
Even its meaning is uncertain. Bābur has traditionally been connected with the Persian word babr, meaning “tiger” or “panther”—an appropriately warlike name for a conquering prince. Some modern scholars have instead proposed that it is related to an older Indo-European word for “beaver.” “Babur the Tiger” may therefore be an attractive interpretation rather than an established translation.
His celebrated memoir is now universally called the Bāburnāma, or “Book of Babur,” but that title was probably attached to it after his death. Babur himself may have called it simply the Waqāʾiʿ, meaning “Events” or “Record of Events,” although its original title remains disputed. The familiar name Babur thus belongs to both the man and his book—but neither began with precisely the identity by which it is remembered today.
17. Shajar al-Durr
The woman who ruled Egypt briefly in 1250 is remembered as Shajar al-Durr, but this was almost certainly not the name she received at birth. Her origins are obscure: medieval sources describe her as having been enslaved, and modern historians have variously suggested Turkic or Armenian ancestry. Her original personal name was never recorded.
The fuller form of her adopted name was Shajarat al-Durr, meaning “Tree of Pearls.” Shajar al-Durr is a shortened form commonly used in modern writing. Such ornate names were frequently given to enslaved women in elite households, but no surviving source tells us who selected hers or exactly when she received it. Claims that a particular master bestowed it upon her therefore go beyond the evidence.
After becoming the companion and then wife of the Ayyubid sultan al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb, she gave birth to a son named Khalil. This provided her with another identity: Umm Khalil, “mother of Khalil,” or Wālidat Khalil, with essentially the same meaning.
When she assumed power, she used these names to establish her legitimacy. Her decrees were signed Wālidat Khalil, while her coins carried Shajarat al-Durr alongside titles proclaiming her queen of the Muslims and mother of Khalil. The personal name with which she had been born disappeared completely. What survives is an ornamental household name transformed, through her own political skill, into the name of a sovereign.
18. Charlemagne
Charlemagne was not baptised Charlemagne. His name was Karl—or Charles in its later French and English form—and Latin writers rendered it as Carolus or Karolus. “Charlemagne” developed from an epithet meaning simply “Charles the Great.”
The Latin adjective magnus, meaning “great,” was associated with Charles at an early date. The Royal Frankish Annals sometimes describe him as Carolus magnus rex, although the phrase can be understood as “Charles, the great king” rather than necessarily as a permanent nickname. In the generations following his death, Carolus Magnus became an increasingly fixed way of distinguishing and glorifying him.
In medieval French, the same idea was expressed as Charles le Magne. Here magne was an inherited form of the Latin magnus. As the title was repeatedly written and spoken, its separate elements eventually fused: Charles le Magne became Charlemagne. English then borrowed the French form.
19. Averroes
The philosopher known in Europe as Averroes was named Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Rushd. In Arabic he is normally called Ibn Rushd, meaning “son of Rushd.” He was also sometimes distinguished as Ibn Rushd al-Ḥafīd—“Ibn Rushd the Grandson”—because his grandfather had been a prominent jurist with a very similar name.
His transformation into Averroes occurred as his writings travelled from Islamic Spain into the Latin-speaking universities of Europe. Medieval translators and scribes attempted to represent Ibn Rushd using Latin letters, often through the pronunciation and spelling conventions of Andalusi Arabic and the Romance languages of Iberia. The result appeared in numerous forms, including Avenrois, Averrois and Averroës.
In the medieval universities, Averroes became so authoritative that he was frequently called simply “the Commentator,” just as Aristotle was “the Philosopher.” Later thinkers identified with his interpretations were labelled Averroists.
20. El Cid
El Cid’s personal name was Rodrigo Díaz. He is conventionally called Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar because of his association with Vivar, near Burgos, but “de Vivar” functioned as a geographical description rather than a hereditary surname in the modern sense.
During his lifetime, Rodrigo was also described as Campidoctor, a Latinised title related to the later Spanish Campeador. Its exact shade of meaning is debated, but it suggested a master, champion or exceptionally skilled commander of the battlefield. Unlike many supposedly medieval nicknames, this one is documented in records produced while Rodrigo was still alive.
“Cid” had a different origin. It developed from the Andalusi Arabic sīdī, meaning “my lord” and related to the Arabic sayyid. We do not know who first addressed Rodrigo in this way. It is often said that the title was given to him by his Muslim followers or enemies, but the evidence does not allow us to identify either a particular speaker or a particular occasion. It could have circulated among people from several religious communities in the multilingual society of medieval Iberia.
One of the earliest surviving written appearances occurs in the mid-twelfth-century Poem of Almería, which remembers him as Rodericus, Meo Cidi saepe vocatus—“Rodrigo, often called My Cid.” The later Cantar de mio Cid made that form famous.
El Cid therefore means approximately “the Lord,” while Mio Cid means “my lord.” The name by which Rodrigo is now universally remembered is a Spanish expression built around an Arabic title.
The names by which we remember medieval figures were shaped by many hands. Some began as titles or affectionate nicknames, while others were translated, Latinised, shortened or altered as they passed between languages. In several cases, the person’s original name has been eclipsed entirely.
These transformations are not merely linguistic curiosities. Names could celebrate victories, advertise authority, ridicule an enemy or make an unfamiliar figure easier for foreign audiences to understand. Unravelling them brings us closer to the people behind the familiar labels—and reveals how much of the medieval past has reached us through the words chosen by later generations.
Top Image: Æthelred the Unready depicted in the thirteenth-century Chronicle of Abingdon. British Library, Cotton MS Claudius B VI, fol. 87v
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