Poor Æthelred- he is unfortunately named for two reasons. First, that whole letter A and E together thing is really hard to do (I may or may not have to copy/paste it in every time I type his name). The letter thingy is common among early kings of England (it also freaks out all automatic spellcheckers, just saying). What kind of nickname do you give someone named Æthelred? "Reddy"? But then you'd be forced to call him Reddy the Unready, which would be weird.
The second unfortunate part of his name is pretty clear: who really wants to be reminded constantly that they're unready? Especially when you're the King of England? If I was the king and people were always calling me unready, there would be a lot of beheadings. Also, "unready"? Was Æthelred some sort of high-maintainence diva who was always running late?
Well, that isn't exactly how he got the name "unready". That is a slightly more complicated story beginning at the end of the 10th century. Æthelred was the second son of King Edgar of England. He was, however, the first son of Ælfthryth, Queen of England (told you the A-E letter combo was popular. Also, how do you pronounce that name?). Æthelred's illegitimate older brother (Edward) took the throne after much contention following Edgar's death. Not long after Edward took the throne, he suffered a "mysterious" death while visiting the castle of Queen Ælfthryth. With Edward out of the way, Æthelred took the throne in 978 at the age of 10 (you can see at this point why he might seem "unready").
Throughout his reign, Æthelred had a lot of problems with Danish Viking raiders. He even fled to Normandy in 1013, relinquishing the throne (ninny). Luckily for him, he got the throne back after the Sweyn (the Danish guy who took the English throne) died only a year later.
Linguists, being the spoilsports (or cool, awesome people, whatever) that they are, decided that this translation of Old English is wrong, and that all of the historical record is wrong. According to them, our homeboy Æthelred isn't "unready", he is "without noble council". Lame. I think that in this case, we should ignore the linguists and go with what he is called historically: Æthelred the Unready.
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