St. Augustine of Hippo/Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis
[Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo in LINUS]
Andrea della Robbia ceramic
Photo: Academic fair use via Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection statement
Pierre Abailard. Petrus Abelardus. Peter Abelard.
Nikolaus Cryfftz. Nikolaus Krebs. Cusanus. Nicholas of Cusa.
Copernicus. Nicholas Copernicus. Niklaas Koppernik.
Such is the way medieval and renaissance names can vary.
We hope these pages can help! Send us any other examples that might confuse others in your class; we'll try to add them here
Medieval names sometimes create a challenge. Even more than with ancient names, you may run into variations on a name between texts, as, besides the official Latin document name, a person would have a name in the local language or dialect; if famous, there might even be a third name by which the person was known in foreign lands. Again, bibliographic listings, and the way the name is entered in a library catalog or a periodical index, as well as in the indexing for Google and other search engines may vary. Here are some things to keep in mind:
1. Medieval names often don't include a family surname/ "last name". Within the new Christian context, there were many people given new baptismal names, as well as many given the names of popular saints. Some Roman naming customs survived in specific, often noble, families, but most people did not have them. But many people got their father's name as a 'last name', e.g. Francesco di Giovanni (Francis, son of John).
2. Medieval people are very often identified by where they come from or with the name of a place with which they are associated, e.g. Thomas Aquinas/Thomas of Aquino, or Duns Scotus/Duns of Scotland.
3. Like in ancient Rome, some important medieval figures got honorific titles, e.g. Albertus Magnus/Albert the Great or official titles (from their office!). Some got both, like Pope Gregory I or Pope Leo I, also known as Pope Gregory the Great/Gregorius Magnus and Pope Leo the Great, and later Saint Gregory the Great, etc.
The Library of Congress System used for LINUS' author names and subject headings are fairly exact in their naming conventions. They often include titles, honorifics and place names, as well as years or approximations of years of birth and death. The system used to prefer the original name in the original language for medieval names, but now goes with the most popular name in current English/American usage. thus the entry for Dante is Dante Alighieri 1265 1321, not "Alighieri, Dante ...," which would make it difficult for those not knowing his family name.
Things can get complicated. The original subject heading, Giraldus Cambrensis, became Gerald of Wales for a while, but now has returned to being Giraldus, Cambrensis, 1146?-1223? as this is how most scholars know him. However, the older heading Aurelius Augustinus was changed to Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo, where most people can find him. Our catalogers work hard to keep these changes up to date, and are resourceful at putting a lot of variants in LINUS (often in different languages) to be used as finding aids, with a link to the correct heading. This can be useful for finding a number of variants on a name you are seeking for searches in databases and full-text sources that aren't consistent with each other.
Many indexing databases are not as forgiving as LINUS! You may have to use the database's exact form of the name, even though the 'incorrect' name as keyword may still pull up a number of hits. The most popular names (Dante, Petrarch, Abelard) will be the easiest, but be careful when you see more complicated names. Try to analyze and see if any part of the name is an honorific or a geographic descriptor instead of the name itself, so you can put it in correctly as a subject heading. You can also search the variations as keywords with OR as the operator; e.g. "Abelard or Abailard".
See the Dictionary of the Middle Ages (an encyclopedia, actually) to help you with medieval names.
Artist: El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopuli)
Subject: Saint Louis of France /
King Louis IX of France /
King Lewis IX /
...
LINUS: Louis IX, King of France, 1214-1270