Talk:Ilya (Archbishop of Novgorod)

I believe "John of Novgorod" is inappropriate, as would be "John the Terrible" or "Theodore Johnson" instead of Fedor Ivanovich (or, say, referring to Isoroku Yamamoto as Fifty-Six Base of the Mountain. I think Russian names should stay Russian, as is the usual convention (with the exception of some of the emperors who are Peters, Alexanders or Nicholases). The problem with Ilya/Ioann is that Ilya appears to have been his early monastic name, and when he entered the schema, the strictest form of monasticism in the Eastern Church, he took the name Ioann. He is referred to as Ilya in the Novgorodian chronicles and a number of other sources, and as Ioann in the hagiography of the Russian Orthodox Church. To avoid confusion with a later Ioann (from the fifteenth century), I have gone with the name Ilya, and believe this is appropriate. I can see to some extent using the name Ioann, especially to link to the Russian-language Wikipedia article, but certainly not the name John of Novgorod, which just sounds silly.Mcpaul1998 (talk) 02:37, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

A Reply
As for me all that depends on if there any established variant, because they used to translate anglophone names into Russian too: William the Conqueror is "Wilhelm" in Russian, queen Elizabeth is "Yelizaveta", king Charles is "Karl", king James is "Jakov" etc., and someone in Russia will hardly match the original (real) variants and historical figures already.

Not sure whether there are any establish variants regarding this person, so the variants being the calque from Russian seem to be the most sound. --Sterndmitri (talk) 11:41, 15 December 2014 (UTC)