Was the term "Knights of the Round" ever commonly used?

There's an arcade game by Capcom called Knights of the Round, whose name always piqued my interest. It's based on the Arthurian legend of the finding of the Holy Grail. During the game ending, the game text says that Arthur's knights were referred to as the 'Knights of the Round', so it looks like the game name isn't "poetic licence"; those writing the game seem to have thought that the knights were referred to as the 'Knights of the Round'.

Now, I've only ever heard Arthur's knights referred to as the 'Knights of the Round Table'. This leads me to a couple of possibilities as to what might be the case:

  • Some people really did refer to these guys as the 'Knights of the Round', eliding the word 'Table', poetically.
  • Capcom made an error in translation, and the term 'Knights of the Round' is only ever used in this arcade game.

Which is it? Was the phrase 'Knights of the Round' even occasionally used to refer to Arthur's knights?


Solution 1:

If “Knights of the Round” was ever used, it was a long time ago and has disappeared. The few occurrences of "knights of the round" in Google Books that don't follow with “table” seem to be digitisation issues (e.g. “tdble” or a hyphenated ta/ble).

knights of the round,knights of the round table,Knights of the Round,Knights of the Round Table http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/chart?content=knights%20of%20the%20round%2Cknights%20of%20the%20round%20table%2CKnights%20of%20the%20Round%2CKnights%20of%20the%20Round%20Table&corpus=0&smoothing=3&year_start=1800&year_end=2000

I can confirm that the round table was already a table in the earliest known text that mentions it, or more precisely la Roünde Table.