Reading ‘It is Grand Master Jean de La Valette’ I really wonder if Joe Zammit Ciantar and I are talking about the same person and about the same subject (The Sunday Times of Malta, May 12, 2013).

I have always held that the only correct name of the hero of the Great Siege is Jean de Valette. This because of three considerations: firstly, because he invariably referred to himself as Jean de Valette. Secondly, because his contemporaries, without a single exception, invariably addressed him as Jean de Valette. Thirdly, because his contemporaries, without a single exception, referred to him as Jean de Valette. Evidence for these three facts literally runs in the thousands.

No one – that includes Zammit Ciantar – has so far, come forward with even the tiniest shred of evidence to the contrary. No one has come up with one single reference to the Grand Master, during his long lifetime, as Jean de la Valette. And yet it is supposed to be perfectly legitimate to foist on him a name he never used, the name of a family to which he never belonged, and which not a single one of his contemporaries ever dreamt of imposing on him.

I am sorry to have to cross swords with Zammit Ciantar on very verifiable facts. The Grand Master’s family name was absolutely not De la Valette. His father was Guillot de Valette, his grandfather was Bernard de Valette – in all contemporary records. All his nephews too were de Valette, until Louis (died 1586) officially changed his family name to De la Valette, years after the Grand Master had passed away.

Not one single source quoted by Zammit Ciantar is contemporary with the Grand Master. Not one. They were all written many years, sometimes many centuries, after his death. They have nil evidentiary value, and they only serve to fudge what is a very clear issue. At most, they prove that the Grand Master’s Google name was Jean de la Valette.

The Valettes were a very extended family which had branched off in various directions. Some branches of that family styled themselves De la Valette, others De Valette. Our Grand Master came from a De Valette branch, not from a De la Valette one. It was only many years after his death that his collateral descendants started styling themselves ‘De la Vallette’, and that writers started referring to the Grand Master as De la Valette. But that was after he had passed away.

I cordially invite Zammit Ciantar to come up with one single signature, one coin, one decree, one deliberation, one letter, one certificate, one contract, one inscription or one medal, out of the thousands made during the Grand Master’s lifetime, in which he is referred to as De la Valette. He will not find one – they are all, without a single exception, De Valette. And I also urge him kindly to spare us more references to 19th or 20th century works, which, with all due respect, are totally irrelevant to what the Grand Master’s name actually was.

But maybe I should just give up. Speculation and irrelevance seem more compelling to some than hard, unequivocal evidence.