Orthography
Books concerning the crown of Aragon face a common set of orthographical dilemmas. Here, Catalan place names are rendered in their Catalan form, even where the English usually prefers the Castillian rendition (notably, Lleida is used, rather than Lérida). Names of monarchs provide more of a challenge, since they ruled over several countries with different languages (primarily, Aragonese, Catalan and Valencian) and, consequently, their names were rendered differently in different territories. Given the general dominance of the Catalan counties in the affairs of the crown of Aragon, the preference here is for Catalan names; with this, the regnal numbers for Catalonia must also be preferred, since some names occur both before and after the union. Hence, we refer to Pere ii (el Gran), rather than his Aragonese monicker of Pero iii, or the Castillian Pedro. Similarly, his successor is rendered Alfons ii, rather than Alfonso iii. Jewish names are generally rendered in their Latinised forms as found in the source documents, although spelling was highly inconsistent and, thus, a standard spelling is selected on a case-by-case basis.
Note on Hebrew Transliteration
Hebrew words are transliterated largely following the sbl Handbook of Style.1 Exceptions are that certain letters are varied according to soft or hard pronunciation, for example, ‘kāp,’ is transliterated as ‘k’ when hard and ‘kh’ when sounded gutturally. ‘Vav’ is transliterated as ‘v,’ not ‘w.’ Some commonly used terms such as ‘Talmud’ follow the usual English spelling.
The section on Hebrew transliteration is accessible online at www.jjs-online.net/pdfs/SBL-Transl.pdf, last accessed 24th August 2017, Section 5.1.1: 26.