Talk:Eadwig

Edwy or Eadwig?

I was surprised to see this article moved from Edwy - which in my experience is much the most common version of the name in English - to the supposedly more correct version, Eadwig. Rather than edit warring, can we have a discussion here please? Ghmyrtle (talk) 07:47, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

PS: I've now read this, but I would argue that, to the average reader. academic arguments are not that important, and it is more important to overcome rather than sow confusion, by using the most frequently used version. If there has been a centralised discussion somewhere on the spelling conventions for Anglo-Saxon names, could someone please tell me where that discussion took place? Ghmyrtle (talk) 07:53, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The prevalent form has been Eadwig for quite some time now in the reliable secondary sources which are available on him; in fact I don't recall having seen "Edwy" for nearly a century (well, I'm not that old, but you get the point). Edwy is the more antiquarian version, which you might come across in older works like the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia, whose effect on Wikipedia still seems to linger on in many places (after all, it's in the public domain). General works of reference which you may consult for questions like these include the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online, see index) or The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England (in print). Hope that clears up things. Regards, Cavila (talk) 08:55, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I don't think it's as clearcut as that - you haven't said where this approach has been agreed for WP, and there is the issue that Edwy has 228K results on Google, and Eadwig has 25K (and that difference won't all be explained by the more common use of Edwy outside this individual, or by WP mirror sites). Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:10, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming Conventions: "Wikipedia determines the recognizability of a name by seeing what verifiable reliable sources in English call the subject". That doesn't include Google searches, particularly not when these yield a bunch of irrelevant hits like sites on English baby names and other guys called Edwy such as Edwy Penel, not to mention the endless replication of old encyclopedia entries - Wikipedia is supposed to be beyond that. Cavila (talk) 11:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Where is the discussion on Anglo-Saxon names, other than at Talk:Eadred of England? If that, and reliance on your interpretation of guidelines, is all that there is, I'd question your actions here and elsewhere. Some of the Google hits are obviously irrelevant, but a 200K difference? - I think there's a real issue. Ghmyrtle (talk) 12:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

What is so ambiguous about the citation? This is standard procedure, not just mine. And to point out just a couple of flaws to your indiscriminate Google statistics: (1) older (esp. 19th-century) sources show up amply in them and the Catholic Encyclopedia is far from the only culprit here, (2) the search results also include the popular 19th-century plays and llustrations like Edwy and Elgiva, but worst of all, (3) you haven't even specified which Edwy you're talking about. See also Wikipedia:Search engine test for some of the common pitfalls. Cavila (talk) 14:05, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

PASE lists him as "Eadwig 4" but also lists no less than 34 different spelling variations, including Edwy.--Streona (talk) 16:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, what PASE does is it uses a standardised name for the person in question (in this case Eadwig) and under "recorded name" it gives a list of spellings as they actually appear in primary sources, whether Old English or Latin. In the case of charters, you may find rather mangled versions by later forgers who copied a witness list, but made errors where they were unacquainted with the language or palaeography of their exemplar. Even in contemporary Old English texts, however, you'll find a good deal of variation. But anyway, we can't simply pick and choose. It is secondary sources on which we should base our choices. Cavila (talk) 19:30, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Like Ghmyrtle, I support the form Edwy. Google books has twice as many hits for that as it has for Eadwig, and many of those for Edwy are recent. Also, in the form Edwy the name is embedded in English literature - for instance, in the work of John Milton, in Charles Jared Ingersoll's Edwy, and in Frances Burney's Edwy and Elgiva. Moonraker2 (talk) 02:01, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Deciding an article name is fairly clear here. If you consider the five points mentioned there, this name beats "Edwy" in that it is more "consistent", more "recognizable", more "precise" and just as "concise" and "easy to find" [I quote these terms since "recognizable" does not mean "the name I saw in a Ladybird book when I was a kid" or "gets more Google hits".] Angus McLellan (Talk) 20:58, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Can you please be more precise in your analysis, instead of making sweeping statements and trivializing other people's comments? No one has mentioned Ladybird books. I did not refer to "Google hits", but to "Google books", which is surely a measure of more significance. Moonraker2 (talk) 21:07, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Even the most cursory examination of the results should demonstrate that neither Google books nor Google scholar results are in any sense limited to "reliable sources" Books, Scholar. The only way to determine the usage in reliable sources is to look at them. But no automated search readily can determine what "reliable sources" are, not Google, not even JSTOR. Angus McLellan (Talk) 22:23, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Very well, then. It may certainly help the 'Eadwig' case that you say "not even JSTOR", as there are also more JSTOR hits for Edwy than for Eadwig. In any event, there has to be some objective basis for measuring which name is "most commonly used in reliable sources". If "not even JSTOR", what objective measure is best? Moonraker2 (talk) 23:28, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure that I share your conviction that there is a simple objective test.

One test, hardly the simplest but undoubtedly the one which serves the project best, would be to substantially improve and expand the article. Reliable sources will be required to do this and their usages can presumably be taken as representative of reliable sources in general. Given the seemingly limited interest shown by historians in Eadwig the ODNB, Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England and Biographical dictionary of dark age Britain are likely to be a significant part of the material available to anyone whose interest is merely a passing one. The only books I own which pay much interest to Eadwig are Hart's Danelaw (perhaps half a dozen pages here and there), Stafford's Unification and Conquest (about the same but in a block) and Yorke's "Æthelwold and the politics of the Tenth Century" (in her Bishop Æthelwold, somewhat more material than the other two). All six items mentioned so far use Eadwig, as does Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England I think, but that's not necessarily representative. Anyone with some books on Dunstan or access to the same could likely find as much or perhaps more information in any one of those and presumably there will be papers out there on JSTOR/MUSE. The only book that I own which might be useful and which uses Edwy seems to be (it's in a box in another country so I can't be entirely sure on either count) David Dales' Dunstan. Angus McLellan (Talk) 00:15, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

You are imagining that I said there is a simple objective test, but I like your new approach, and I'm struggling to find better authorities. Cyril Hart mentions Eadwig three times, on pages 447, 448 and 583, the first two times quoting charters. I don't have access to Pauline Stafford's book. I can't find a reference to Eadwig in Stenton. Thomas Hodgkin's The History of England from the Earliest Times to the Norman Conquest uses Edwy, as does Eric Linklater in his The Conquest of England (1966), though perhaps Linklater is rather thin. Moonraker2 (talk) 01:02, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

If we split the syllables Ead or Ed and wy or wig then it could be either Ead or Ed since his brother was either Eadgar or Edgar but does "wy" occur in other names ("wyn" does meaning "joy")? "Wig" certainly does- the obvious name is that of Wiglaf in Beowulf, which would imply that the form Eadwig has a meaning, but does Edwy. I mean,I don't know - does it? --Streona (talk) 01:48, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, almost all of these Old English name elements have a meaning, and wig means 'strife', or 'war'. Some other instances are in Erwig, Wigmund, Wigstan, Wigmund. Wigmund became Wimund very early on. Wigstan is often rendered as Wistan or Wystan. Moonraker2 (talk) 23:40, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if this helps or hinders this discussion, but I came upon the article while looking up the truth of an anecdote about him in Jerome K Jerome's classic novel "Three Men In A Boat", where he is referred to as Edwy. I suspect this is the best-known popular culture reference to the King, and probably the main reason why non-historians would have heard of him. Butcherscross (talk) 11:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

"Eadwig" is an Old English name, "Edwy" is a mangled version, as suggested above. Compare Æthelthryth and Audrey: there, Wikipedia has an article about a person indisputably named "Æthelthryth", while "Audrey" is the mangled version of the same name that survives today. Google searches can be useful, but must be used with care. If Wikipedia "seeks to create a summary of all human knowledge", then in this sort of debate, regarding the name of a specific individual, it's better off checking the reliable secondary sources in the library, rather than blindly asking Google how many times the name appears on the web. To that extent, I think mention of Three Men In A Boat is very apt. And, given mention of Pauline Stafford, I was fortunate enough to have her as an undergraduate tutor many moons ago, and I'm confident that if I'd written "Edwy", she'd have put a red pen through it and written "Eadwig" over! "Edwy" need only be mentioned as a variant spelling. That's how I see it, anyway. Nortonius (talk) 13:39, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

• His name means "fortunate war", or (if it is a bahuvrihi) possibly "fortunate at war". Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:56, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Plagiarism

because this article does not cite any refrences theirs reason to belive that this article was plagiarised from the article located here http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Edwy_of_England because it is identicle, however they may of copied it from wikipedia. Please explain where you got your information from —Preceding unsigned comment added by Matt-tastic (talk • contribs) 05:54, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

www.absoluteastronomy.com is a Wikipedia mirror site - they got it from here. Refs do need to be provided for this article, as indicated by the {{cleanup}} tag Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:09, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Lose the image in his infobox?

• His infobox includes the image File:Eadwig.jpg. Should that image be there? See [1]: that image is some late 18th-early 19th century engraver's guess at what he looked like; it is unlikely to go back to a real image of him, and when the engraving was made there was no face-from-skull reconstruction skill, and no modern archaeology finding and preserving coins with his face on made in his reign. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 10:51, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Ælfgifu and her mother Æthelgifu

The "cavorting" in question consisted of Eadwig (then only 16) being away from the feast with Ælfgifu and her mother Æthelgifu. He later married Ælfgifu…

(But then)

The annulment of the marriage of Eadwig and Æthelfgifu…

I know he is supposed to have cavorted with both of them, but he can only have married one or the other. Valetude (talk) 23:47, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Æthelfgifu as wife is a typo which I have corrected, and also the account of the quarrel. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:04, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Birthdate

I don’t think that a birthdate of c. 940 is plausible, as the Anglo Saxon Chronicle states he was 16 years old when he died in October 959 - so his birth year would’ve been 942 or 943. Dancingtudorqueen (talk) 00:21, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

OK, but it is not for us, as editors, to decide. On Wikipedia, good sources always trump editorial opinions, no matter how well reasoned. We have a high-quality recent source for the c. 940 date, so unless you can find an equally high quality secondary source that gives a different date, we are stuck with it. Agricolae (talk) 03:59, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

The Chronicle does not say that Eadwig died aged 16. It says that Edgar succeeded aged 16. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:08, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh right, my misinterpretation. Dancingtudorqueen (talk) 04:39, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Seneschal

The term "seneschal" is used four times, including in the lead. I don't know what it means, and its article is sufficiently imprecise that I am still in the dark as to its meaning as used here. Can each use in this article be replaced (retaining the link to seneschal if desired) with whichever of the various meanings apply in each case? Bazza (talk) 12:56, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

This is a complicated issue. I think it needs its own article and I will work on it. Dudley Miles (talk) 10:10, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Eadwig's Charter to Abingdon Abbey c.957

Presumably Eadwig's Charter to Abingdon Abbey c.957's charter should be linked in this article somewhere, but I don't think it currently is (and I'm not sure where makes the most sense to link it). – Aza24 (talk) 06:57, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I do not see any point in linking it. The article does not say which charter it is or what the charter said. It seems to be a random collection of facts, some of which are presumably relevant to an unidentified charter, but which tells a Wikipedia reader nothing useful. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:01, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Then nominate it for deletion? Otherwise its our responsibility to integrate it into the encyclopedia... Aza24 (talk) 18:32, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I have thought of that. Strictly, it should be deleted, but someone has put in a lot of work which might be useful to someone else in the future. I am inclined to leave it, but I certainly would not oppose deletion if an editor proposed it. Dudley Miles (talk) 11:44, 3 June 2023 (UTC)