Talk:Cnut

message: I never saw the phrase "Cnut the Great" until I saw this article a few years ago.  I grew up learning that only Alfred had this designation.  Indeed Alfred, the savior of his country and his people, seems to merit this epithet better than Cnut.
Alfred understood that his people needed history to remind them of their loyalties. So he instituted a chronicle, a record of current events, unique in Europe. The saviour of the English language, he was also the founder of English prose. No other English monarch is remembered as "Great". "The Story of English", McNeil, Cran & McCrumb, 1986.
A separate section on nomenclature is typical in Wikipedia and this change, if it indeed is an accepted change, should be mentioned somewhere in the article.68.196.10.68 (talk) 16:46, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: That is an interesting question and one I have sometimes wondered about. Among modern historians the term seems to be mainly used by Timothy Bolton - it is the title of his well regarded biography. I have looked to see whether he discusses the term, and presumably he does but I cannot see where without reading the whole book. Dudley Miles (talk) 17:41, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Designations might change over time. Cnut the Great was "Emperor of the North" and founder of the shortlived "Northsea Empire". In Danish he has 'always' been refered to as Knud den Store = Cnut the Great (or Magnus when latin is used). Perhaps it's a characteristic of our time, that we in some connections seek to sort of synchronize the expressions used in various langauges? But to use the designation "the Great" can some times be a fairly modern phenomenon. Take the Danish King Godfred/Gudfred (c. 804-810), until the 1980'ies no one ever called him "den Store" and untill around 2010 this expression was only rarely used, but since then it has become more common to use and perhaps in another decade or two he will predominantly be refered to as "Godfred den Store"?  Oleryhlolsson (talk) 18:47, 27 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Just plain (non-great) "Canute" is the almost unanimous verdict on Ngram. ThuDauMot (talk) 01:18, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  When did Canute become "Great"? 

message: An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect :Cunt the Great and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at  until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.  ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 01:28, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Cunt the Great" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The result of the move request was: Not Moved (closed by non-admin page mover)  * Pppery * it has begun... 19:28, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Cnut →  – A number of moves of this article have been discussed comparatively recently, but this one has not been discussed in the last decade.  This remains his WP:COMMONNAME in English, see e.g. King Canute and the tide  It is also used by some respectable sources like the Encyclopedia Britannica and the British monarchy website.  It is also not what his own people would have called him, which would be "Knut" or "Knutr". PatGallacher (talk) 20:58, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

text: *It may be official but it is also unreliable. It claims at  that it started in the reign of Alfred the Great, which is nonsense. it is just a sales organization which has no regard to historical facts. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:50, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: *Alfred struck coins, and there has been a continuous royal establishment doing so since his day. While it leaves out quite a lot of history and change, it's not exactly nonsense. TharkunColl (talk) 19:27, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: *There was no royal establishment producing coins in Alfred's day. They were struck by many different private moneyers from the 7th century to long after the Norman Conquest. Alfred's reign was not numismatically significant. Dudley Miles (talk) 19:49, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: *But a continuous history can be traced, my point being that it's not complete nonsense. But it's also somewhat beside the point. The Royal Mint is simply one example. Canute, for better or worse, is still part of our living tradition, purely because of the sea incident (whether or not it actually happened), and in modern English his name is spelt Canute. Are we to adopt contemporary spellings for all monarchs? TharkunColl (talk) 19:56, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: *We go by modern spellings in reliable sources, as shown by the spellings in the bibliography. Dudley Miles (talk) 20:09, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: *Then perhaps you might like to go and change King Canute and the tide. It's almost as if there are two separate individuals, the "Cnut" who reigned over England, Denmark, etc. and the "legendary" Canute who got his feet wet. This distorts the truth. TharkunColl (talk) 20:14, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

text: * Since the story of Cnut and the tides is almost certainly either totally legendary or at best a distortion of a misunderstood episode - it makes sense that we would consider the person of the story of the waves to be unrelated to the powerful king who ruled over what could be termed an empire.. Ealdgyth (talk) 21:59, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: *That's like having two separate spellings for Ælfred, King of Wessex and the Anglo-Saxons, and Alfred, some bloke who burnt some cakes. The article title for that particular individual, incidentally, uses the modern spelling. TharkunColl (talk) 08:43, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 1 July 2023 

message: I've readded a line about the story of canute and the tide to the lede -  a section has been added to the main body since this seems to have been deleted and it's almost certainly the sole thing anyone not versed in Anglosaxon history will know about him so it's weird not having it in the lead.. 37.245.43.126 (talk) 12:21, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The waves