We associate lionhearted and its shorter brother lionheart with King Richard Iof England (1157-99).
It is unknown whether King Richard could speak English(we know that he spoke French and Occitan, also called Provençal), butRichard’s nickname was not English; it was the French phrase Coeur de Lion. Lionhearted entered English in the 18th century; lionheart, the Englishtranslation of Coeur de Lion, was coined by Alfred Lord Tennyson in 1832.
