What’s in a Name? Tracing the Origins of Alfred’s ‘the Great’

• DOI: 10.1093/ehr/ceae078
• Publication Date: 2024-05-21T08:55:32Z
• Authors: Matthew Firth
• Keywords: Tracing

Abstract King Alfred (r. 871–99) is the only native-born English ruler to have gained byname ‘the Great’. This was not a contemporary sobriquet, but often considered been bestowed in Elizabethan era by Reformation scholars who increasingly cast role of founder nation. The acknowledged exception reference as Rex Alfredus magnus (King Great) marginal annotation Matthew Paris’s early thirteenth-century text, Deeds Abbots St Albans Monastery. medieval attestation Alfred’s sobriquet is, however, less isolated than has previously thought. Drawing on variety and Old Norse-Icelandic texts, this article identifies twenty-five examples being called Great’, twenty-three which gone unremarked. In so doing, it argues for widespread tradition first sole all England, from at least thirteenth century.