LorenzoGuapo Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6444 days ago 79 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: French
| Message 1 of 6 27 May 2010 at 12:24am | IP Logged |
In the US its very common to find people who were born in the US who have non English first names and last names, but I find it a little more interesting when its done in another country for example the Costa Rican soccer players Jody Stewart Jones and Winston Parks, even though I know Parks is most likely of Jamaican descent like other Costa Ricans moreover in Chile there is a soccer player named Kevin Harbottle and also there is a famous Chilean of Haitian descent Jean Beausejour, I wonder if any of you have met someone who has a name in your language but doesn't speak that language.
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Derian Triglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5308 days ago 227 posts - 464 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Czech, French, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 2 of 6 27 May 2010 at 5:49pm | IP Logged |
Yes.
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ember Triglot Groupie CyprusRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5403 days ago 63 posts - 101 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, German Studies: Spanish, French, Greek, Polish
| Message 3 of 6 27 May 2010 at 9:29pm | IP Logged |
It's a bit weird for me to meet foreign girls with names like Nadia, Sonia, Tania, Katia. These are Russian short/affectionate forms of Nadezhda, Sofia, Tatiana, Katerina, respectively. We do use them a lot, but no one in Russia would have these (short) names in their passports for official use.
PS: every time I call my daughter Sonia, people here in Cyprus ask if her name is actually Sonia or Sofia. But it is both!
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ladanoise Groupie United States Joined 5293 days ago 45 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Danish
| Message 4 of 6 30 May 2010 at 3:41am | IP Logged |
Actually, I purposely gave my sons names that translate easily in case they wanted to work abroad. In retrospect, my thinking was Eurocentric but I did what I could.
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ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5335 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French
| Message 5 of 6 30 May 2010 at 4:08am | IP Logged |
I will forever be grateful to my parents for giving me a name that is known and used in a number of countries while my brother got the short end of the stick. He got a name with the infamous Dutch g in it but then he has no interest in foreign languages and cultures at all so I guess my parents found just the right balance.
A lot of Dutch parents give their children English names such as Wesley and Jessey or even worse, Dutchified spellings of Michael such as Mikal. There is a reason why the number one trashy name is Sjonny (from Johnny) though: this is generally a lower-class trend and the people who give and have these names generally speak atrocious English. Parents who are truly interested in the Anglophone cultures are more likely to give their children names that are international and can be pronounced in both languages.
Edited by ReneeMona on 30 May 2010 at 4:09am
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qklilx Moderator United States Joined 6186 days ago 459 posts - 477 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean Personal Language Map
| Message 6 of 6 30 May 2010 at 11:25am | IP Logged |
Slightly related: a female Korean name "Yoo-jeen" (유진) is pronounced almost exactly as the male English name Eugene. The only difference is the inevitable difference in vowel pronunciation, which most people wouldn't catch anyway. Suffice to say, Korean girls with that name are disappointed when they meet an English speaker.
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