Talk: Aethelric

Is there evidence in the book that the name should be spelled "Æthelric", and not "Aethelric" as this article states it is written in the book? --Sntint 14:14, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Æthelric si the correct era-specific spelling of that name.

Comics are lettered in a very limited character set that does not include ligatures. We dont' go assuming peoples names are all-caps just because comics lacked lowercases either. -Derik 14:29, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, no, we don't. There's no precedent for all-capitalized names (except in Hyrule.) This, though, seems like a farther leap of logic than that would be, IMO. I'll read up on ligatures tonight. --Sntint 15:06, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, while fonts may consider Æ a separate 'letter,' from a typographical standpoint it is equivalent to 'Ae'-- Æthelric == Aethelric. It's not a different spelling-- it's merely a rendering of the first two letters as one character.

If Ron Wasserman were to be discussed by a future society which had discarded the letter W (I use this because it's a relatively recent addition tot he alphabet) his correct name would not become Rov VVaserman-- even though it would doubtless be common to see it rendered thus. (This is distinct from my previosu point because though W started as a double-v ligature, ti became its own letter because it had a unique pronunciation.) -Derik 16:03, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I say we spell the name the way it's spelled in the book. After all, we have the Energon episode at Scorpinok. The published material beats author intent. The Æ spelling should be limited to trivia, as it was never used in the published material. --FortMax 21:07, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

To repeat my earlier statement- Æthelric is not a different spelling. It simply has the first two letters ligatured together- which is the correct way of rendering that name in that era. Æ == Ae. However Æ cannto appear in comic-book-lettering for the same reason lower-case letters cannot. Thus 'Æthelric' is similar to placing the Energon episoce at Scorpinok instead of SCORPINOK. The title was, after all, all-caps. -Derik 23:34, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I would normally be inclined to agree with Derik on this point -- it is not actually a different spelling to combine the two letters -- but at the same time, I'm pretty sure comics in the mid 1980s were still lettered by hand, not with a computer, so there would have been no "character set" restriction as he mentions. If they'd wanted to combine the letters, they would have. So... I think there's no point in combining them here. --Steve-o 01:44, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Derik, I was under the impression that the reason comic books are in ALL CAPS is because all the letters have identical vertical hight and placement: i.e: AJK vs. ajk. It had nothing to do with limited characters. --FortMax 02:01, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Regardless, you don't see a lot of ligatures in comics either. -Derik 02:45, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

While I think ligatures are kinda cool, this Wiki sets out to preserve the mistakes of the Transformers genre as well as its successes. We should render the name the way it appeared in the comic, "Ae". Further, the note that the letterer chose to do it this way 'cause kids don't grok ligatures is sheer speculation, and at least should have a "possibly" in front of it. Derik's point that we do re-render names-appearing-only-in-comics from ALLCAPS into Mixedcase is cogent and relevant, but I don't believe it should be used as a guideline here. The ALLCAPS nature of comics is a specific compromise whose reasons and history are known, while we don't really know why this guy was spelled "Ae". Finally, while "Æ" was the correct way to spell his name in the 11th century, this is a Wiki of the 21st century, and the correct way to spell his name now is "Ae". I vote for moving the article to the "Ae" spelling. JW 15:21, 27 September 2007 (UTC)