This is a list of personal names known in English that are modified from another language and are or were not used among the person themselves.
It does not include:
- names of monarchs, which are commonly translated (e.g. Pope Francis), although current and recent monarchs are often untranslated today (e.g. Felipe VI of Spain)
- aliases, pseudonyms, and stage names (such as the librettist Metastasio)
- latinized spellings of other languages and other spelling variants (such as removal/spelling out of diacritics, e.g. Arnold Schoenberg, born Arnold Schönberg, US citizen in 1941)[1])
- permanent name changes, colloquially known as "Ellis Island Specials" (such as George Frideric Handel born Georg Friedrich Händel, naturalised British subject in 1727; Sumner Redstone, legally translated his originally German/Yiddish surname Rothstein along with the rest of his family in 1940)
This list also includes names from non-English languages the individual did not use, such as Latin or French.
Modern convention is not to translate modern personal names.[2]
Translated names currently used
See also
References
- ^ John R. Shook – Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers: Volume 1 – 2005 Page 2153 "He became a US citizen in 1941, thereafter spelling his name as Schoenberg."
- ^ Journal of the Kafka Society of America Kafka Society of America 2003 Volume 27, Nos 1 & 2 – Page 54 "To begin with false notes, the conventional recent practice among translators has been not to translate personal names, and we might therefore think of the transformation of the German Georg into an English George (Jolas, Beuscher, ."
- ^ Dava Sobel A More Perfect Heaven: How Copernicus Revolutionised the Cosmos – Page 5 – 2011 "He was christened for his father — Mikolaj in Polish, Niklas in German, his native tongue. Later, as a scholar, he Latinized his name, but he grew up Niklas Koppernigk,"
