Page:Orthodox Eastern Church (Fortescue).djvu/12

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PREFACE

writing Greek names down to about 1453 as if they were bad Latin and then suddenly transforming them into the semblance of worse Italian; for making the same name, for instance, Hypsilantius if it occurs in the 9th century, and Ipsilanti when it comes again in the 19th. Undoubtedly the reasonable course would be to write them all out as they are, in our letters. But what is already a matter of course in Germany would seem intolerably pedantic in English. I began with some such idea. Then I found that it would lead to writing Gregorios, Konstantinos, even Athenai and Antiocheia. I have not the courage. So names that have an English (that is not Latin) form have been let alone—Gregory, John, Philip, Paul; names whose Latin forms are known everywhere are written in Latin—Athanasius, Heraclius, Photius. Only in the case of less known names have I ventured to spell them in Greek rather than form any more sham Latin—Anthimos, Nektarios, Kyriakos. Sometimes the same name belongs to different people, and then it seems hopeless to try to be consistent. For instance, the present Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria calls himself Photios, and I have left him so, in spite of his more famous namesake. Unless one goes the whole length and says that Iustinianos lived at Konstantinupolis, I do not know what else can be done. The Greek υ is y; and ου becomes u in any case. Of course this spelling is no sort of guide to the pronunciation. All the Greek words at any rate in this book should be pronounced as Modern Greek. The few Slav names that occur are not written according to any system at all, but are merely copied from various books in other languages that evidently follow different systems of transliteration.

The other point is the use of the word Orthodox. Since the schism I have called the people in union with the Œcumenical Patriarch so. Of course the name then has a special and technical meaning. Orthodox in its real sense is just what we believe them not to be. But, in the first place, it seems impossible to find any other name. Eastern is too wide, the Copts and Armenians form Eastern Churches, Schismatic involves the same difficulty, besides being needlessly offensive. We do