About names

Question

Hello Everyone!!

Can anyone explain me that how can be spelling of name changes in spanish??

E.g. John = Juan In english it is John and in spanish it is Juan How could it be possible???

Answer 1

Some names can be "translated" and some others cannot. I put translated in quotations because if my name is John in English, it will never be Juán in Spanish unless I change it to be so! I will say that those are the "equivalent" to English and Spanish. As far as I know, the names that have a "translation" from one language to another, are those that come from a language that has a different alphabet that the one we use and we take the "sound" of that name and place our characters and syntax to make them easier to pronounce. Someting similar happen to name of countries, continents, cities, etc. Some of them change and some of them don't. I.E U.S.A = E.E.U.U or Estados Unidos, Great Britain = Gran Bretaña. But China = China, Africa = África, Australia = Australia, etc.

• John (Juán) derives via Latin I?hann?s and Greek ??????? from the Hebrew name ????? (Yô?anan, also transliterated Yochanan), a short form of the long name ?????????? Yehochanan, meaning "Yahweh is generous"

Thanks alot - sweety11, May 2, 2012

My pleasure! - farallon7, May 2, 2012

I never understood why some historical figures' names are translated and some aren´t. Why is it not Jorge Washington, first president of the USA, but there is a Rey Jorge? - missy8888, May 2, 2012

Answer 2

Most biblical names have a diffrent version for every language, it has to do with the pronunciation rules and prosody of every of them, so:

John

Juan

Jean(French)

João(Portuguese)

Johannes(German)

Giovanni(Italian)

Joan(Catalan) and so on.

Thanks alot - sweety11, May 2, 2012