20 Ridiculous Nicknames History Gave Its Most Famous Rulers

Gaius Caesar, the Roman emperor known as Caligula, reigned from 37 to 41 AD and went down as one of the most terrifying emperors in the history of Rome. He received his nickname as a toddler, while his mother was taking him around the army camps along the Rhine River. She dressed him in a tiny soldier’s outfit, complete with little boots, and the soldiers called him Caligula after them. When he became emperor, Caligula detested the childish nickname and forbade anyone to use it, but the historian Suetonius put it down anyway.

William I, Prince of Orange, commanded the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish crown during the 1500s, and although he was called “the Silent,” he was anything but. He was known as an eloquent and charismatic speaker. However, in 1559, when French king Henry II wrongly thought William already knew of a conspiracy to exterminate all Protestants and told him about it, William never replied or showed any emotion. That silence is what earned him the name William the Silent.

Justinian II was the emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 685 to 695 AD. However, a revolt led by the general Leontios deposed him in a coup. Since the Byzantines would not allow a disfigured man to rule, his captors cut off Justinian’s nose. After being exiled to Crimea, he allied with the Khazars and the Bulgars and had a gold nose prosthesis fashioned. A decade later, he recaptured Constantinople. He reigned once more until 711 AD and is remembered as “Rhinotmetus,” the Slit-Nosed.

Zhang Zongchang was the warlord who ruled China’s Shandong province between 1925 and 1928. His rule was characterized by a cruel dictatorship, high taxes, and extravagant spending. The public mockingly dubbed him General Three Don’t Knows for having claimed, with apparent pride, that he didn’t know how much money he had, how many troops he had, or how many concubines he had. In stark contrast to many other rulers on this list, Zhang seems to have proudly embraced the moniker.

Louis XI was king of France from 1461 until his death in 1483. When breaking the back of his powerful feudal rivals, he preferred spies, bribes, and informants to open combat. Jean Molinet, the Burgundian court poet writing from a hostile camp, described him in verse as l’universelle aragne, “the Universal Spider,” placing the king at the center of a web of concealed threads that ensnared his foes throughout Europe. The image lingered long after any battle account had faded.

The British vice-admiral Edward Vernon, in the 1700s, was known as “Old Grog” because of the cloak of grogram he wore to shield himself on deck when the sea was rough. In August 1740, while commander of the Royal Navy’s West Indies station, Vernon ordered that the sailors’ daily rum ration be mixed with water and lime juice to reduce the amount of drunkenness. Vernon didn’t invent rum. He just watered it down. But the sailors called it grog, after Vernon, and we got both the words grog and groggy.

The Bulgarian peasant swineherd Ivaylo led a revolt against invading Mongols and an ineffective tsar in 1277. After defeating the Mongols, he married the widowed empress and became the Bulgarian tsar until 1280. His humble birth bothered the aristocracy more than his victories did: in Old Bulgarian they called him Bardokva, “Radish” or “Lettuce.” In Greek, the Byzantine chronicler George Pachymeres sneered that the usurper was called Lachanas, “Cabbage.”

Charles II reigned over England, Scotland, and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration until 1685 and was known for his extravagant court, his fondness for horse racing (he frequently attended races at Newmarket), and his numerous mistresses. He was known by some in court as “Old Rowley,” a reference to his favorite and notoriously fecund thoroughbred, and a dig at how many illegitimate children he fathered. The king heard of the nickname and thought it amusing; on occasion, he would call himself “Old Rowley.”

George was made Prince Regent in 1811, when his father, King George III, became too ill to govern, and he ruled in his stead until 1820. When George III died, George became king himself, ruling as George IV. He was known as a spendthrift who racked up debts, and with a weight topping 240 pounds, he drew constant ridicule. Satirists made fun of George’s weight and spending, and cartoonists such as George Cruikshank nicknamed him the Prince of Whales, after his actual title, Prince of Wales, and depicted him as a whale vomiting forth wine and money.

General Joseph Stilwell was the commander of American forces in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II from 1942 to 1944, and he had no qualms about speaking his mind and lambasting his own superiors. The moniker “Vinegar Joe,” however, came much earlier, in the 1930s when Stilwell was stationed at Fort Benning, Ga. A subordinate drew a sketch of Stilwell’s head sticking out of a vinegar bottle, and the name stuck with him through the war, where it seemed quite apt given his strained relationship with Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. He died in 1946.

Margaret I was a Scandinavian regent who established the Kalmar Union (which united Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) in 1397. Legend has it that during her war against the Swedish king, Albert, in the 1380s, Albert taunted her as “King Without Pants” and sent her a whetstone on which she should grind her sewing needles rather than attempt to rule. In retribution, Margaret’s troops defeated Albert’s army at the Battle of Åsle in February 1389, took him prisoner, and held him for six years before he abdicated.

Constantine V ruled the Byzantine Empire from 741 to 775 AD. He was a successful general and secured the empire’s borders, but he also implemented Iconoclasm, the banning of icons in the church and the destruction of them if found. This made him many bitter enemies among the monks and monastic writers. For example, hostile chroniclers such as Theophanes the Confessor popularized the nickname “Copronymus,” which means “Dung-Named.” They invented a story about him defecating in his own baptismal font as an infant, meant to suggest God’s rejection of Constantine V from birth. The tale, however, was simply slander.

John was king of England from 1199 until 1216. While he is most famous for signing the Magna Carta, he’s also best known for losing most of his family’s holdings in France. French king Philip Augustus took Norman land away from John in 1204 after John did not launch any meaningful counteroffensive. The chronicler Gervase of Canterbury gave John the Latin name Mollegladius, “Softsword,” an epithet separate from his boyhood moniker, “Lackland,” which referred to the fact that he had no land of his own to inherit.

In the Spanish kingdom of Leon, Alfonso IX reigned between 1188 and 1230. He called the Cortes of Leon in 1188, considered one of Europe’s earliest parliaments. Later Arab chroniclers recorded that he foamed at the mouth in times of great anger or stress. In Spanish, he came to be known as El Baboso, the Slobberer. That slobbering is what got him his nickname. The parliament is what gave him his legacy.

Frederick III of the House of Habsburg reigned over the Holy Roman Empire from 1440 to 1493, a period of 53 years that was marred by enemies, financial problems, and noble revolts. He liked to garden and collect precious stones. His indifference to such threats irritated the German princes, who called him Erzschlafmütze, or “Arch-Sleepyhead.” But he never lost, because his patience was strategic, not a failure of character. Charles the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, and Matthias Corvinus, the King of Hungary, and other more ambitious rulers died before he did, securing Habsburg power for generations to come.

Among George Washington’s more aggressive generals during the Revolution, Brigadier General Anthony Wayne was well-known for his ferocious bayonet attack on Stony Point in 1779. He earned the moniker “Mad Anthony” after he had one of his camp followers, known as Jemmy the Rover, arrested for disorderly conduct. Upon learning that he had been thrown in jail, Jemmy famously asked if the commander had lost his mind. The soldiers began repeating the question, and it became associated with Wayne’s reputation for aggression on the battlefield.

Winfield Scott was six feet five and served in the US Army from 1808 to 1861. He led US forces in the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War, and was the architect of early Civil War strategy. But despite being a very competent field commander, he earned the nickname Old Fuss and Feathers among his men for his insistence on strict parade-ground discipline, crisp dress uniforms, and tall feathered hats, even in muddy, forested terrain. He was mocked, but that didn’t stop him from taking the reins for many years.

During the 1850s, Thomas Jonathan Jackson taught at the Virginia Military Institute, where cadets knew him for an intense, uncompromising Presbyterian faith. Cadets called him Old Blue Light, period slang for the strict Blue Light Presbyterians who rigidly observed the Sabbath. Some of the soldiers he commanded during the war later attributed his nickname to his piercing blue eyes that seemed to blaze during battle. This was years before he earned the nickname “Stonewall” after the 1861 First Battle of Bull Run.

In the Civil War, Major General George McClellan led the Army of the Potomac for the Union and, on the whole, was a skilled organizer who put together a truly disciplined fighting force. His agonizingly gradual march toward Richmond during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, as well as his repeated tendency to exaggerate the strength of the Confederate forces he faced, annoyed many Northern newspaper editors and congressmen. In letters and columns, they mocked him as Tardy George or The Virginia Creeper. He had been known as “The Young Napoleon” not long before.

Louis V was the final Carolingian king of West Francia. He was crowned in March 986 AD at the age of about 20. The reign was marred by political ineptitude and internal feuding between the nobles and vassals. With nothing to show for his rule and no heir, he perished in a hunting accident only 15 months after being crowned. Chroniclers called him Louis le Fainéant (Louis the Do-Nothing), and his death opened the door for Hugh Capet to found the new royal dynasty.

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