When do we start naming ex-Vikings with EuroAristo titles and name-policy syntax?

Question

Hello G2Gers, 

Today I left this comment:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Crequy-3#comment_6635115

Has this question already been answered on G2G? Is there an ongoing discussion or current policy? Is it evolving or fixed?

Cheers, Isaac

p.s. Link to comment on profile is formatted. Same content here on G2G loses all formatting.  

On 23 Jul 2022 Isaac Taylor wrote on Crequy-3:

There are some cousin-marriages between de Guînes, Boulogne, Flanders etc which complicate placement(s) and identification(s) of this woman's descendants. Is anybody expert in these inter-connected families? Concerned that previous researchers may have ruled out certain connections presuming consanguity is not kosher, when in fact, it was common for a variety of reasons. Here is one example: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodolphe_Ier_de_Gu%C3%AEnes ''«Il épousa v.1010, Rosella (°v.995 †?), fille d'un comte de Saint-Pol, peut-être d'Hugues II de Saint-Pol. Les auteurs divergent sur la signification du nom de son épouse : pour les uns, Roselle provient de la couleur de son teint ; pour les autres, elle a été ainsi nommé en référence à Rozala, épouse d'Arnoul II de Flandre2. Elle épouse Rodolphe bien qu'ils aient été cousins au 3e degré, car Rodolphe était petit-fils d'Arnoul II comte de Boulogne, qui était lui-même frère d'Hugues Ier de Saint-Pol, grand-père de Rosella1.»'' I realize this is "just" Wikipedia, got it; curator of that page cites (but I have not read) this 1632 source: *Duchesne, André, '''Histoire généalogique des maisons de Guines, d'Ardres, de Gand et de Coucy et de quelques autres familles''' I've merely "bumped into" these folks & and not actively working on them. I come to this profile / family group, working backwards from a certain Guy de Guînes, briefly ~13th count of Forez during the Crusades (circa ~1110) and transition of Forez from the house of Albon to Forez (d'Albon-de-Forez cadet line). I'm trying to ascertain why -- through what marriage or logic -- Forez ended up (briefly) in the hands of Guy de Guînes; and what the relationship is or may be (if any) between ''that'' Guy (i.e. Guigues) de Guînes, and the subsequent very long run of ~10 Guigues in Forez and Lyon etc. The latter are lineal for my kids, and a zillion living descendants of de La Tour et al pioneers of Acadia; and broadly speaking, most of these families end up in Jerusalem centuries before Acadia, which is interesting history. So I'd like to map out the causaulities of who/what/where/why/when to the extent possible. This forces me to follow the titles and lands moving between families (including possibly this one) in addition to names and genealogy. Separately, If any experts in this region have strong feelings about when Danish names become French or Flemish names, eg Arnulf --> Arnoul, please advise. By when I mean, when should we make that change here on Wikitree, according to their customs by generation regardless of what modern researchers have back-propagated. Perhaps a better way to ask this question is what year/generation would we ''label'' a hypothetical man called GOFRID SIGURDSSON, jarl of nothing, mere warlord-raider of (the imaginary town) Ville, as Godfrey de Ville, comte en [foo] etc? This is further complicated by the concept of LNAB being used by convention to encode names not actually given at birth, and some of our name syntax policy confusing in essence everybody except us e.g. a Dane simply named GOFRID SIGURDSSON in reality might by policy actually have a profile named '''"Godfrey (Godfrid) "comte en Ville" (Ville) de Ville formerly Ville"''' on WikiTree. Which of course is used nowhere else. So, as we work through these profiles and their connections and numbering etc, to reiterate: when ought we switch from emigrant-name-culture to immigrant-name-culture, in essence? (Options: Before or after the invasion? Titling? Inheritance of the holding, such that it becomes a defacto family name? Or later, when we have a surviving primary source artifact in latin i.e. perhaps generations later?) Cheers,

Answer 1

I don't know who Mahaut (Crequy) de Boulogne was but Wikitree shows her as my 30th great grandmother.

Answer 2

Sorry Isaac, but to start with I find it really difficult to read such a huge paragraph at any time, but even more so on a screen, so I might be missing a point you are trying to raise.

As I still understand it, the naming convention on WikiTree is that for everyone born in Europe pre-1600 we use the original European Aristocrats naming standard (except for Scotland which have their own standards).

As you note all early medieval sources would be in Latin, and as there were no dictionaries the spelling of any name be it person or place could vary, even within the same document.  As such I think we use the (unwritten?) policy of writing names in the modern European language most appropriate to that person, which can be difficult because they moved around (particularly the Vikings) and borders between countries were often very fluid.  For instance Sigurdsson, might not have existed as a name in early medieval literature.

In terms of how some of these medieval people fit together, one of the traps is to think that somehow all the Counts of Guines or whatever country/county/manor we are researching, must all be related. Whereas we know that places could be won by force (think Vikings or Norman Conquest) or were a gift of the monarch, and that gift could be easily taken away.

Solely relying on early modern sources (such as Duchesne writing in the 17th century) can also be a problem because although they did start to use medieval material as sources, they were still often supported by members of the nobility, who wanted to retain their genealogical pretensions to more famous ancestors.

The other issue behind your question, which I am sure has been mentioned before, is that we know there are many problems with pre-1500 profiles, but unfortunately there aren't that many people on WikiTree who have been deemed to have the necessary skills and knowledge to fix these issues, and actually fixing the issues takes time.  So although it is great that you and other's point out some of the problems, they may not be rectified quickly.

Answer 3

FWIW I do not think there can ever be a perfect policy for name standardization. Every time discussions about this come up on SGM they get a bit silly. Richardson has his own approach, which I think basically no one agrees with. MEDLANDS has a different approach, which also gets criticized. Many SGM genealogists argue that we SHOULD be deliberately messy and avoid excessive name standardization.

I think in any case that we can rightfully use different approaches in different periods. Just because we know a name had a Viking or Frankish origin, this does not mean we should use that information when writing about people centuries later.

The perspectives of contemporaries who really used the names are probably most important, and they often ended up confusing names with different origins, such as Arnulf and Arnold, or Godefrid and Gaufrid.

Unfortunately in some cases we also have to take modern habits into account in order to avoid making someone unrecognizable.