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I thought an epitheton ornans was a descriptive name after a proper name which became part of the proper name, as in William the Conqueror, Jimmy the Greek, Vlad the Impaler or Aethelred the Unready.




Isn't that a rather subjective process though? Sometimes the epithet's status as part of the name may be less than universally accepted. For example, there are many people in India who do not consider Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to have been a Mahatma.