Armenia’s Warrior Queen | Hacker News Reader

Armenia’s Warrior Queen

historytoday.com

30 pointsThevet10 comments

A few clarifications for those who care: the name is pronounced Parandzem (not P'aranjem) -- both in old and modern Armenian. This queen is very well known in modern Armenia and lots of women still carry her name. It is falling out of favor with the new generations due to being tough to pronounce and "internationalize", but she is certainly a celebrated person in Armenian history. <https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?keywords=par...>

The first paragraph of the article refers to the highly controversial "Erato" all-women detachment, which was a blatant PR stunt on the part of the current PM's wife (who also runs massive "charities" that local oligarchs have to volunteer funds to in order to stay in favor with the regime, among other fun activities). It's a bit "apples and oranges" to compare a vacuous PR move by the prime-minister's family with actual warrior-queens of the past.

Also, here's another interesting Armenian queen, who ruled in the medieval Cilician Armenia on the Mediterranean coast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella,_Queen_of_Armenia

> the name is pronounced Parandzem (not P'aranjem)

Even with the same pronunciation, the spelling depends on the chosen romanization scheme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Armenian

(Based on the table in that article, I think "P'aranjem" is using the ISO 9985 scheme.)

I mean, I've never seen an English speaker pronounce 'j' as 'dz', but the Armenian letter ձ is pronounced exactly like 'dz' and never like 'j'. So, dare I say, ISO 9985 is wrong?

The goal of a romanization isn't always to represent the pronunciation in English. They may have other goals, like a one-to-one mapping of letters between alphabets or something. English doesn't pronounce 'q' like 'ch' or 'c' like 'ts' but that's more or less what they represent in pinyin.

So I agree you are right about the pronunciation. I just don't think the article claimed they were spelling it phonetically for English.

>Why are medieval women largely absent from current discussions of Armenia’s past?

Female warriors and rulers are largely absent from history in general! Or, misrepresented.

The Queens of Infamy project is a great resource: https://longreads.com/tag/queens-of-infamy

The Queen of England is hardly unknown.

Funnily enough Queen Sheba is missing from that list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Sheba

The collection is focusing on world-historical figures. The historicity of figures like the Queen of Sheba is disputed.

That list is missing Deborah, one of the 'Judges' of ancient Israel:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah

And if the list is limited to 'Queens' then I guess that means it rules out Joan of Arc:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc

It seems female warriors and rulers aren't absent from history; rather, they are absent from the knowledge of historians.

E.g. marginalizing women historically: Florence Nightingale was an administrator and empirical scientist, in charge of various nursing organizations for her entire career. How is she remembered? "That nice nurse lady that cared for our troops", often pictured out in a tent on the battlefield. No, she was not an individual caretaker; she was a competent head of major organizations and revolutionized the way nursing is done.

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