THIS IS NOT AN EXAMPLE SEEKING QUESTIONS, RATHER I'M TRYING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT SEEMS LIKE A GENERAL TREND, AND TO EXPLAIN THAT TREND I WILL USE EXAMPLES OF WHICH I AM NOT SEEKING MORE
As you can imagine my previous post on this topic got removed.
Anyway, history is full of important people who got titles for their achievements, William is famous for conquering and Simon Bolivar for liberating, thus they are known as William the Conqueror and The Liberator.
And yet there seems to already be a difference with this 2 characters that can be seen all along history, even though many call Simon Bolivar "The Liberator" most people call him simply by his name, not so with William.
And so, when we reach the 19 century characters like Bismarck or Lincoln go titleless, despite being crucial in the history of their respective nations, and despite that enough time has passed since they lived for history to award them such a title if they didn't have it in life.
It gets to the point that today no one would think of giving Obama, Merkel or Putin any title, despite each of them being seemingly influential enough to deserve it.
Not even modern kings or queens get such titles, at least not internationally, no one calls Mohammed Bin Rashid "The Builder" despite it being a good description for his rule, nobody calls Bhumibol "The wise" or something like that.
What happened?
Just another note here, that as titles for rulers fell out of fashion, nicknames for sports heroes started showing up. Perhaps there is some connection?
Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator. Bismark was known as the Iron Chancellor. Stalin was known as the Man of Steel (which is a literal translation for Stalin, a name he chose for himself). Hitler was known as Führer, which was also a title he chose for himself. Stalin and Hitler chose their names. Bismark approved of his, but may not have picked it himself. Lincoln's was most likely applied posthumously.
In WW2 there were a number of knicknames, such as Mengele's The Angel of Death, but a lot of those were applied by their enemies, not their admirers, and as such were not formally accepted by their target and elevated to a title.
Really it's only in the post-WW2 era that it fell out of fashion, at least in the European/American world. In other areas such as Africa the tradition continues (such as General Buck Naked). Pol Pot was originally Saloth Sar.
I suppose it comes down to the fact that most of these nicknames are applied in times of war, and the Cold War just didn't give rise to occasions where a nickname was earned, much less turned into a Title. I suppose you could argue for George W Bush's "Dubya"