For years I've been irritated by the insistence of many writers in such wargaming journals and newsletters as Slingshot on misspelling the word Scythian. In fact, most of the Brit members of my wargaming club in Hong Kong absolutely refused to look any any evidence to the contrary, and insisted on spelling (and mispronouncing) it as "Skythians".

Now that the new Ancient Warfare rules are taking off here in the good ol' US of A, I want to make a strong pitch to ensure we do not make the same mistake in the AW army lists. So, taking the proverbial hammer to the fly, I made a list of the books in my library which used the 'Scythian" spelling, and which spelled it "Skythian." Here it is.

List of Books using the "Scythian" (otherwise known as the correct) spelling:

Barr, S. The Will of Zeus: A History of Greece From the Origins of Hellenic Culture to the Death of Alexander. New York: A Delta Book, 1965.
Bradford, Ernle. Thermopylae: The Battle for the West. New York: Da Capo Press, 1993.
Casson, Lionel. The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers & Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient times. New York: Minerva Press, 1959.
Dodge, T. A. Alexander: A History of the Origin & Growth of the Art of War from the Earliest Times to the Battle of Ipsus 301 BC, with a Detailed Account of the Campaigns of the Great Macedonian. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.
Fairbank, John K. & Edwin O. Reischauer. East Asia: The Great Tradition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960.
Frumpkin, G. Archeology in Soviet Central Asia. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970.
Frye, Richard. The Heritage of Central Asia: From Antiquity to the Turkish Expansion. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996.
Garbiel, R. A. & K. S. Metz. From Sumer to Rome: The Military Capabilities of Ancient Armies. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.
Goodrich, L. Carrington. A Short History of the Chinese People. Revised Edition. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1951.
Grun, Bernard. The Timetables of History. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975.
Hambly, Gavin (Ed.). Central Asia. New York: Delacorte Press, 1969.
Kurinski, Samuel. The glassmakers: An Odyssey of the Jews – The First Three Thousand Years. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1991.
Legg, Stuart. The Barbarians of Asia: The Peoples of the Steppes from 1600 B.C. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970.
Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Art of War. A Revised Edition of the Ellis Farneworth Translation, with an Introduction by Neal Wood. New York: Da Capo Press, 1965.
O'Connel, Robert L. Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth & Death of War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Osprey Men-at-Arms Series No. 137. The Scythians 700-300 B.C.
Rolle, Renate. The World of the Scythians. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
Roux, Georges. Ancient Iraq. Bungay, Suffolk, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1966.

Of all the other books in my library, the only one standing against the above list, i.e., using the "k" spelling, is the WRG Army Lists Book One: 3000 BC – 75 AD (August 1981).

How's that for 'overkill'? Let's not perpetuate this error in our AW army lists. I don't know about you, but I feel much better.