It’s high time we restored a naming convention for political leaders that was popular about 12 centuries ago — when Louis the Stammerer, the King of West Francia, was born on November 1. He was also the ruler of a place called Aquitaine after he succeeded his younger brother Charles the Child. But his father, Charles the Bald, had been an emperor (of Carolingia), and Louis the Stammerer never got that far. I’m assuming that being emperor of Carolingia would be a step up from King of West Francia and Aquitaine, even though my grasp of where these places are amounts to “somewhere in what is now France.”
But the main reason for mentioning this family is because of those names — I mean, we could today be looking at people like Donald the Orange, Charles the Awkward (England has already had one King Charles the something, although that something was “Martyr”), Vladimir the Expressionless, and, well, Joe the Stammerer (Joe Biden had a stutter in his youth).
Louis the Stammerer has been described as “a simple and sweet man, a lover of peace.” His description never mentions stammering, probably because in the 9th Century they were evidently very economical with their descriptions and though the name sufficed. His son Charles the Simple eventually became king after Charles the Fat (a cousin) took the throne for three years mostly because Charles the Simple was only 5. But Charles the Fat should have been called Charles the Screwup, because he ruled so poorly they kicked him out. By the way, they probably didn’t mean what we think we meant by “simple;” back in the day it just meant “straightforward.”
The very handy naming convention seems to have faded after Charles the Simple, because his children didn’t have descriptive names at all: Ermentrude, Frederuna, Adelaide, Gisela, Rotrude, Hildegarde, Arnulf, Drogo, Rorise, and Alpais. And Louis the IV, but my story is that numbers don’t count, and I’m sticking to it. Just call me Pete the Stubborn.
