Eastern Churches by modern writers. But, as will be seen from my references, I have compiled my own book, as far as I could, from original sources. It is perhaps hardly necessary to say that all my quotations are at firsthand. Where I refer to Al-Maḳrizi, Severus of Al-Ushmunain, Shahrastani, Barhebræus, and so on, I have gathered my information from their works. Only in the case of Armenian books am I unable, through ignorance of the language, to consult any. Fortunately, Langlois' collection of Armenian historians in a French version to some extent compensates for this.
One of the great practical difficulties was how to spell proper names. Without any wish to parade scientific transliteration, it seems nevertheless clear that one must have some system for writing names from so many languages, at least enough system to spell the same name always in the same way. The most obvious suggestion would perhaps seem to be to spell each name in the usual, familiar way. As far as there is such a way this plan has been adopted. Names which have a recognized English form, such as John, Peter, Gregory, are left in this form. So also when the Latin form seems universally familiar in English—Athanasius, Epiphanius. But there are many names which have no recognized spelling. Nothing can make such as Badr alǵamālī, Ḥnanyešuʿ, Mšīḥâzkâ, Sbaryešuʿ look familiar to an English reader. The old-fashioned way was to make the nearest attempt one could at representing the sound of these names, according to the use of the Roman letters in the language in which the book is written. This has many inconveniences. First, to anyone who knows how such names are written in their own letters it is as irritating as to see a well-known French writer called "Bwalo." Secondly, the Roman letters represent different sounds in different languages. A German writes "Dschafar," an Italian "Giafar," a Frenchman "Djafar" for the same name. In English, particularly, the same letter represents often a multitude of sounds. "Ptough," used in the translation of Ormanian's book,[1] represents no particular sound to an Englishman. Thirdly, Semitic languages have letters of which the sound cannot be even approximately indicated by any combination of ours. And,
- ↑ The Church of Armenia (Mowbray, 1912), p. 148.
