Talk:Lothair II of Italy

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[edit] Move

This was discussed on a user talk page before. I paste it below:

The change was primarily from "II of Arles" to "II of Italy", but the secondary Lothar to Lothair change was important, too. The 1911 Britannica, the Columbia, Encarta, and the World Almanac (all designed for popular readership) use Lothair. Wikipedia also uses Lothair in all its articles (see Lothair). The old Cambridge Medieval History uses Lothar, as do most modern works it seems. Lothar is the German version of the name, Lothaire is the French, and Lotario is the Italian. I think the modern preference for Lothar is similar to the modern preference for Pippin over Pepin: it indicates the influence of German scholarship in these areas. I have even seen Lothaire in some works. Lothair, not being the correct form in any other language, is surely the proper English form, to be preferred in an encyclopaedic article. In scholarly works, the authors decide whether to use English or non-English forms for reasons known to them. I think the use of Clotaire over Chlothar or any other variant is a poor choice, but at least Wikipedia is consistent in it. I hope this justifies the change to you.

I will defend the move in more depth here, though I take exception to a reversion solely because a defence was not preemptively offered on the discussion page. Firstly, Lothair is the proper English spelling and Wikipedia elsewhere recognises this. Use of Lothar for this specific, entirely non-German individual is incomprehensible. Secondly, in what sense he is "of Arles"? While he is called that because his father was there count, it is solely a byname and has no connection to his ordinal. He was the king of Italy and the second Lothair to be such, therefore he is "Lothair II of Italy". There are several other references for this usage and a simple Google search reveals a few of these that occur online. Srnec 03:25, 26 May 2006 (UTC)