King Alfred, Alfred King, the King Alfred, or Alfred the King: The Development of the Relative Order of Personal Names and Their Titles in Apposition Traced in the Peterborough Chronicle

Proper names and titles in apposition can be joined with or without an accompanying definite article in any of the following arrangements: King Alfred, Alfred King, the King Alfred , and Alfred the King. Alfred King , which sounds unusual today, was the rule in the earliest period. King Alfred , the most favored by modern speakers, was virtually absent in Old English. The patterns with the definite article developed later and have been accepted to different degrees at different times. What must have been relevant to the choice among these patterns are meaning, emphasis, euphony, and rhythm, but their role cannot be established without native Old English informants. Anachronistic applications of modern linguistic intuition to old data must be avoided. However, if the data can be related linearly to the present-day usage with strong empirical backing, today’s intuition may be utilized for a more fine-grained analysis of the past data. In this article, such an attempt is shown to be effective in reconstructing the functions of different appositive patterns in the tradition of vernacular English historiography as represented by the Peterborough Chronicle .