Compare Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. There are many possible axes of comparison, but I want to focus on their names. To his mother (and other compatriots), Tolstoy was and is Lev, since that's the Russian equivalent of Leo; yet to English speakers, he is Leo. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, could be Teddy. Well, OK, he wouldn't be, but he could be Theodore, since that's the analog of Fyodor; yet he remains Fyodor.
Likewise, compare Czar Nicholas (Nikolai) and Joseph Stalin (Yosif) with Mikhail — not Michael — Gorbachev. (I don't know why some people render Stalin's name as Josef, since it doesn't approach the Russian pronunciation any better; note also that while Stalin was born in Georgia, the name was borrowed into English from Russian, not from Georgian.) What's up there?
I have some suspicions, for instance relating to how similar the name is to the English version (which explains Lev becoming Leo, but Fyodor staying Fyodor, but doesn't explain Mikhail staying Mikhail), and relating to the time of English adoption. But I wonder whether others have studied this more closely, not just as to Russian but also as to other foreign-alphabet languages.
Related question: What about the occasional Anglicization of names from Latin-alphabet languages? The one example I know off the top of my head is Popes; is that just simply related to the Church's willingness to speak to people in their own language (even during the era when the Mass was in Latin), or is there more to it? Are there other examples?
Related Posts (on one page):
- Transliteration of foreign names:
- Foreign Name -- Translate or Transliterate (or Copy)?
The first example that came to mind for me was Christopher Columbus. It's Anglicized from the Latin Christophorus Columbus. In Italian, he's known as Cristoforo Colombo. And in Spanish, he's known as Cristobal Colon.
Juihan --> Jason
Tingyao --> Tina
It tends to give them some more familiarity with their students and prevents the butchering of their names.
Gustav Adolf of Sweden is usually rendered in English as Gustavus Adolphus.
Ivan and Johan are nearly never rendered as John.
Friedrich is usually rendered as Frederick, though Rotbart becomes Barbarossa.
Karl der Groesser is rendered as Charlemagne rather than Charles the Great.
Louis retains its French pronunciation while Henri becomes Henry and gains the English pronunciation.
I don't have a unifying theory other than idiosyncrasy or fashion, I'm afraid.
The medieval custom was to adapt your name by picking a last name from the new country's language that resembled the pronounciation of your last name. The other custom, esp. among scholars, was to translate your name into Latin and go by that.
My guess (and it is just that) is that someone, at some point, decides whether a name needs to be "Anglicized" and how to do so. Thus "Josef" Stalin because the "f" at the end makes it clear he is foreign. Sometimes we try to Anglicize names and fail, because the original spelling is just as easy "Adolph" Hitler never caught on, for example.
Finally, the more "English" a name looks, the less likely zomsons will change it. Thus, Gorbachev's first name remained "Mikhail" and was never "translated" into "Michael" (I also note that for a long time, Russian and Eastern European surnames often were translated into "ff" instead of "v" at the end (Romanoff vs. Romanov, for example). This runs counter to EV's theory--and the examples he posits seem to go both ways. But as I said at the beginning, this is just intelligent guesswork on my part.
As very few Americans know these rules, Asian kids have their names mispronounced by teachers all the time.
Meanwhile astronaut versus cosmonaut actually reflects a nuanced specificity. The space-race was nationalist, country focused. Thus nationality was an important descriptor.
I saw an old German map of the world for sale. The German name for the Pacific Ocean is Stille Mar. How often we forget that some proper names are actually descriptive.
I'm reminded of the Woody Allen line about how the Russian Revolution started when the people realized the Czar and the Tsar were the same person.
Harder to guess about Leo, but likely it came through French, whereas Leon - through Spanish (by way of Mexico). Not that there are not cross-use cases in these languages.
Starting at the end, the Arabic names are mostly direct translations. E.g., both Jordan and S.Arabia are Mamlakat (most closely translated as "kingdom", compare with the Hebrew "melech"), whereas Oman is a Sultanat. There is some logic, but not necessarily as an actual explanation, in translating the French and Spanish titles as kings (the originals coming from the Latin Rex). The German and Russian native titles are both derived from Caesar, claiming the Roman inheritance. Not surpisingly, they are alternatively translated as Emperor. Conversely, Slavic words for king are derived from Carl, aka, Charlemagne.
And for good measure, Napoleon was titled Kaiser in German (in German it is a generic word for emperor).
He should be damn exotic! Do you think it's just really Wally Shawn in reverse translation?. So should be Anna Karenina. Unless, of course this is Shakespeare in the barrio approach.
"Karl der Groesser is rendered as Charlemagne rather than
Charles the GreatBig Chuck."There, fixed it for you. :-)
Just to be a stickler:
Leonhard is not just lion, but lion-strong
Leonid is essentially a patronymic, like [Peter] Ilyich [Tchaikovsky], [Suleyman] Ibn-Daoud, [Snorri] Sturluson, or [Rembrandt] Harmenszon [van Rijn]
In other words, if you screw it up for a long enough time to enough people it magically becomes correct by definition.
German tends to do this. Hippopotamus, for example, literally means "river horse" in Ancient Greek, and is called some variant of the Greek root in most languages.
The animal's name auf Deutsch?
Flusspferd. River Horse.
Whether you want to go to St. Monica's or not (dunno why not, it's a nice church) - the name of the town it's in is officially the "City of Santa Monica" - as in the original Spanish: while convention dictates that saints' proper names are usually given in the official or prevelant local language - hence "Saint" Monica for the church dedicated to her. And course, in Spanish, it is rendered as "Iglesia de Santa Monica" anyway; so no prob.
Oh, and M: Tiger Woods ISN'T an exception: his birth name was Eldrick Woods: "Tiger" is indeed, a nickname.
And what do you think "walrus" is if not "whale horse"
Why is the German city Koln) pronounced and spelled 'Cologne' in English?
Why Moskva is Moscow?
Why Roma Rome?
I've always wondered this.
Sk
The Latin name (the city began as a Roman military settlement) was Colonia Aggrippina (Agrippa's conlony-- i.e., settled by that general's veterans). The latter half of the name was dropped long before the Empire bit the dust, so it became simply Colonia, which came down into French as Cologne while the Germans shorted it further to Köln.
Re: Why Moskva is Moscow?
Russian (and general Slavic) /v/ evolved from a /w/ sound, and may still have had a bit of a /w/ sound to it when the English first visited Muscovy in the 16th century. So they may have heard "Moskwo" for the city name ("a" and "o" sounds are also a bit intrechangeable in Russian) which then got further garbled to "Moscow".
Re: Why Roma Rome?
In French final "a" weakened to a null (schwa) vowel, spelled "e", then dropped altogether. We got the name from the French. (Alternatively this same development could have happened in English even without the French: English also weakened many of its final vowels, then dropped them with the median vowel lengthening; hence all those silent e's on our long mid-vowel words)