The guy was called Charles le Magne (French for Charles the Great) and some barely literate idiot who had somehow* got the translator job in spite of clearly not being anywhere near fluent in French made up a stupid new word born of ignorance that the English speaking world has been using ever since.
*I’m guessing he was the failson of the groom of the stool or something like that.
I don’t know when that happened for the English language, but Charlemagne (as a single word) is also what the French language calls him, the earliest variations of it appearing in the Song of Roland (11th c.)
So you’re telling me that, presumably due to medieval French people having an irrational fear of spaces between words or an allergy to proper kerning, his name WAS actually the equivalent of Charlesthegreat like some German compound noun weirdness?
“Boss, I can save you a couple of deniers’ worth of ink and paper over the course of the tome by writing Charlemagne instead of Charles Le Magne every time we refer to the great king.”
“Brilliant! You get an extra serving of gruel for lunch!”
an irrational fear of spaces between words or an allergy to proper kerning
Yeah uh, medieval language was not nearly as entrenched in rules and grammar, and absolutely not set in stone. Things changed from one text to another - even within the same text. The same Song of Roland writes that same name in a few different ways, some with spaces, some without, with different letters.
From the French Wikipedia, count’em :
Carles (vers 1) ou Charles (28, vers 370), Carles li magnes (68, vers 841) ou Charles li magnes (93, vers 1195), traductions de Carolus magnus, mais aussi Carlemagnes (33, vers 430) ou Charlemaignes (138, vers 1842)
Fun fact: there was actually zero Charlesmagnes.
The guy was called Charles le Magne (French for Charles the Great) and some barely literate idiot who had somehow* got the translator job in spite of clearly not being anywhere near fluent in French made up a stupid new word born of ignorance that the English speaking world has been using ever since.
*I’m guessing he was the failson of the groom of the stool or something like that.
I don’t know when that happened for the English language, but Charlemagne (as a single word) is also what the French language calls him, the earliest variations of it appearing in the Song of Roland (11th c.)
So you’re telling me that, presumably due to medieval French people having an irrational fear of spaces between words or an allergy to proper kerning, his name WAS actually the equivalent of Charlesthegreat like some German compound noun weirdness?
Huh. TIL!
“Boss, I can save you a couple of deniers’ worth of ink and paper over the course of the tome by writing Charlemagne instead of Charles Le Magne every time we refer to the great king.”
“Brilliant! You get an extra serving of gruel for lunch!”
Save ink by removing spaces! Brilliant.
Charles Le Magne
Charle
sLeMagneCharlemagne
Save three letters per instance of the name being used. If it’s a history of French royalty, that adds up!
Yeah uh, medieval language was not nearly as entrenched in rules and grammar, and absolutely not set in stone. Things changed from one text to another - even within the same text. The same Song of Roland writes that same name in a few different ways, some with spaces, some without, with different letters.
From the French Wikipedia, count’em :