My favourite amongst the Polish kings is a toss-up between Władysław the Elbow-high and Władysław Spindleshanks .
I give you Eric II, King of Denmark. “He was known as Eric the Memorable…but no one remembers why.”
Bruno the Questionable.
Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy (a Viking leader who conquered and colonized that region of northwestern France) was known as “Hrolf the Ganger” (“Walker”) because he was too tall to ride a horse (no stirrups then, and his feet would drag).
There was also a Viking leader called “Ivar the Boneless.” There are several theories as to why. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_the_Boneless
“Edward the Caresser” is a play on “Edward the Confessor”, who was king of England from 1042-1066.
I know that, I was just offering him up as a suggestion.
Exactly, which makes it even better.
Alexander II of Russia was known as the Tsar-Liberator for his ending of serfdom.
Back to the OP…
Ivan “the Terrible” is the common English translation of Ivan Grozny, his Russian name. “Grozny” has connotations of “awesome” as well as “awful”, as does “terrible” in phrases like “a terrible responsibility” or “the terrible Day of Judgement”. Ivan was a successful war leader who expanded Russian territory and was the first Russian ruler to call himself Tsar, among other accomplishments that made him terrible in the grand sense; but he was certainly terrible in the more common sense, too. He did, as the OP mentions, kill his son in a fit of rage; more seriously, he created the first of Russia’s many secret police, the oprichniki, and conducted one of the early reigns of terror against class enemies (in his case, the boyars).
My favorite royal nicknames:
Henry VI of Castile, or Henry the Impotent. He was. Apparently the poor man was born with malformed genitals.
Ivar the Boneless, already mentioned. A Viking ruler in England was called Eric Bloodaxe, but I don’t know if that was a nickname or his actual name.
Two sultans of Turkey: Selim I was called Selim the Grim, because he was. He was a competent ruler and war leader, but he was given to arbitrary executions and inagurated what became an Ottoman tradition of offing all his male relatives to avoid competition for the throne. Later came Selim II, Selim the Drunkard, or for lovers of obsolete alliteration, Selim the Sot.
From Ireland - Conn of the Hundred Battles, and Niall of the Nine Hostages.
Niall, by the way, may now have as many as three million descendants, and one study suggests that 2% of the men in New York are related to him. See here
Nickname. Eric Bloodaxe killed four of his own brothers, and was only a ruler in England after he’d been thrown out of Norway for being a nasty king. He was replaced with his brother Haakon, who was nicknamed Aðalsteinsfóstri because he was fostered by English king Athelstan, and later Haakon the Good. At least according to Snorre.
Edmund II “Ironsides”
To add: Harold I of Denmark (Bluetooth)… wonder why he was called that…
but apparently the bluetooh symbol for wireless connectivity is from the runes for H and B…
Not exactly. That’s overstating the data a bit to suggest that everyone with that Y haplotype descends from Niall. All that haplotype shows is a descent from Niall’s male kin-group, which even in his own time could’ve been hundreds or thousands of people. You could be descended from Niall, or his brother, or his third cousin-five-times-removed.