A twitter thread by @EzhmaarSul from June 11, 2023, made some interesting points about the use in English of spellings like “Nikaia” rather than “Nicaea”. Few will have seen it, and I’ve never seen another public discussion of the subject. So let’s give it a bit more visibility.
It went as follows:
Something I really hate about modern amateur historians (and which will leak into the professional class as these amateurs achieve doctorates) is the mixing of Greek and Latin spellings of Greek names. I’ve fallen prey to the same because of the ubiquity of amateur historians.
It starts with people wanting to use phonetic spellings of closer to the original Greek.
This urge comes from a deranged, nerdish desire to “well actually” people through text. Not as malicious as BCE, but coming from an adjacent place in petty souls.
“It’s Nikaia, not Nicaea!”
Not only does this look ugly and wrong in modern English, which is based on Latin rules of spelling and grammar, but it betrays a certain philistinism.
Greeks don’t use our alphabet! You’re broadcasting to us, “I don’t know how to pronounce this unless I spell it wrong.”
This also screws up scholarship. We have centuries of scholarship referring to Alexius Comnenus and John Palaeologus. Then along comes some redditor-turned-PHD writing about “Alexius Komnenos” and “Ioannes Palaiologos.”
And they invariably f**k it up.
“Oh Theodoros is obviously Theodore, so I’ll call him Theodore Laskaris in my paper… but Ioannes is exotic! I’ll call him Ioannes even though everyone recognizes it’s the Greek version of ‘John.’”
Don’t get me started on “Constantine.”
Just stick with the Latin and Anglophone spellings, you buffoons.
I think the author has a point. It does look hideous. It does create a barrier. It makes Greek history look barbarous.
There is a definite tendency among elites to create barriers for others in order to advance themselves, to order others around while feeling smug. How else did we end up with printed Latin texts where the useful modern separation of consonant and vowel, of “i”/”j” and “u”/”v”, was actually and deliberately abandoned? So… I rather agree.
Just a note on a reverse view of this detail: Greeks have a problem pronouncing English and French words and names and as such, have “resorted” to writing some of them in a way that can be uttered by a Greek’s tongue – literally.
Two examples:
– Charlemagne (French tongue-twister) is written “Καρλομάγνος”. (“ch” and “sh” sounds do not exist in spoken and written Greek).
– Hastings is written “Αστιγξ” – “Αστιγγος” and pronounced “Astix”-“Astiggos” in the Genitive.
Not forgetting the familiar “-os” and “-as” endings that are added to facilitate the Greek tongue…
Which is entirely right and proper.
On Charlemagne and Hastings it is a bit more complicated than that. Ancient and Byzantine sources did transliterate and adapt proper names, hence Ashurbanipal is Σαρδαναπαλος -Sardanapalos. This practice was adopted during the era of Katharevousa leading at other times to reasonable results and other time to utter travesties. Galileo is Γαλιλαίος, but Roger Bacon is Βάκωνας – Vakonas! After the rise of Demotic as the accepted Greek this practice has slowly died down, but because it has happened within a lifetime it has led to mixed result. King Charles III is referred in Greek as Καρολος because he has been called so for decades, his sons though are typically called Γουίλιαμ and Χάρρυ instead of Γουλιέλμος and Ερρίκος. Maybe when Prince William takes the throne he will be called Γουλιέλμος, I am pretty he has a say on it or at least someone in the palace. If the person though is from some place more exotic, transliteration rather than adaptation goes.
Nikaia also spelled Nikea, for me has always been the refugee neighborhood in Piraeus where several of my classmates came from. The other one in Bithynia, has always been more fluid in its spelling. Is ELOT standard 743 the right way to transliterate a Greek place name in Latin characters when we are talking about an academic context more substantial than the name of the authors? I don’t know
“….Roger Bacon is Βάκωνας”
True (complete with the Greek need for the -as ending), but if a Greek pronounces the name “Englishly” as “Bey-kon” it would surely bring to mind the pork delicacy, which could be perceived as making fun of that person – hence the more subtle Βάκωνας…
I think the strongest argument for retaining the Latinised spellings is simply the convenience of consistency: there’s no need to write ‘Thoukudides’ when ‘Thucydides’ has been written for God-knows-how-long. In other words, I don’t know why you resort in your penultimate paragraph to the claim that Hellenised spellings look “barbarous” and “ugly”. This sort of language would rightly not be tolerated if we were talking, for instance, about Latinised versions of Arabic or Chinese names.
I think an English (or even Latin) text which contains Hellenic names will be “forgiven” if each name is placed in its Greek written form, alongside in brackets. That way, the reader can have an extra piece of information or clarification, which he can either notice or disregard, depending on the reason he is studying that text… Just a thought…