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There seems to be an edit war going on in the summary box in the Issues section, including some vandalism. I lack the subject knowledge to do anything about it.John W. Kennedy (talk) 18:23, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
What is this "Latinized" business? Someone has been running around turning the conventional English spellings of ancient and medieval Greek names into the conventions used for modern Greek, such as changing "Comnenus" to "Komnenos". That's bad enough and messes up Wikipedia by making pre-modern Greek and Roman history look very alien for an English reader. But it's all half-done, so you end up with bastardisations like this, when "Theodore" is translated if anything over-enthusiastically into the usual English convention, while the other two names are left looking like Klingon. Oh, dear! Deipnosophista (talk) 07:30, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Deipnosophista! This is actually the transliteration format used in the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, and has been a de facto standard in Wikipedia for many years now for Byzantine names after a community discussion. AFAIK, there is no "conventional" spelling of Greek names in English, except in so far as earlier publications used to render Byzantine names in the latinized forms common for ancient names as well, due to the prevalence of Classical scholarship in the field. In more recent scholarship (certainly from the last third of the 20th century onwards), this is overwhelmingly not the case. I realize that you are probably more familiar with the Latinized forms, but I think you exaggerate a bit how much of an impact this "change" really has. First, most English readers probably haven't actually heard of that many Byzantine people, so that "Komnenos" and "Comnenus" makes no difference to them. Second, to claim that "Comnenus" is a more "natural" English form than "Komnenos" merely because it has been used earlier and longer, is IMO to elevate a convention to the status of undisputed truth; both forms are transliterations of a foreign name, in different ways, and functionally equally valid. I fail to see how "Theodore Comnenus Ducas" is less of a bastardization than "Theodore Komnenos Doukas", unless of course you prefer "Theodorus Comnenus Ducas", which is Latin, not English... It is a "bastardization" in the same way that "Nicholas Romanov" or "Alexander Karađorđević" are "bastardizations", following the "Anglicized first name + transliterated dynastic family name" pattern. Certainly the host of publications by English-language scholars using the ODB forms doesn't appear to indicate any problem with readability or comprehensibility of these forms by their readers. Long story short, both WP:COMMONNAME as evidenced in WP:RS, as well as de facto community consensus, support the present form. Constantine ✍ 09:01, 28 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Does anybody care to point the source of this wording? - "...but then diverted it against Bulgaria, an AMBIVAlent ally which threatened his northern flank."
Or it is just another piece of greek propaganda here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.83.222.109 (talk) 18:52, 9 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
