Talk:Konrad von Wallenrode

Title

The German name is what is used in Eric Christiansen's The Northern Crusades and William Urban's The Teutonic Knights. "Conrad of Wallenrode" does not give any results in a normal Google, and only one hit through Google Books. Olessi 04:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Move

This article should be moved to either Konrad of Wallenrode, or Conrad of Wallenrode. It is common in English to translate the names of nobility, especially when concerning German names. Hence it's William II instead of Wilhelm II and Albert Frederick, Duke of Prussia instead of Herzog Albrecht Friedrich von Preußen. The preposition "von" can easily be translated with the English "of" as these are (or originally were) titles, not surnames. Rex 15:44, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

I'd oppose the move to the anglicised Christian names, here and in the other articles affected. The convention of using international (English) name forms, in my experience, conventionally applies only to royalty, ruling princes and the like. As per Olessi's findings above, this is not the common usage in the English-speaking literature in the present case. Please present evidence that forms like "Conrad", "Henry", "Godfrey" etc. are used in cases like these.

I'd personally have no strong objections against replacing "von" with "of", as this is also what we do with many other medieval names, but not consistently so. It's definitely not an obligatory convention in English; English literature does speak of "Wolfram von Eschenbach", "Walter von der Vogelweide", "Goetz von Berlichingen", etc.

I'd suggest we keep the discussion of the whole series of articles centralised in one place. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)