I understand different names in different languages generally, so if I liked John, but I was French I would use John, or Spanish I would name my son Juan. But how do they think it's okay to change the names of individuals or countries? The United States is an English nation (well founded in English anyhow, if you want to argue its language today), and it was named the United States. Their actual name is that, not anything else like los Estados Unidos. Similarly they change the name of Peter, from the bible, into Pedro or Pierre. Technically for that matter Peter is the way English people changed it from his name in Hebrew.
I don't think this should be allowed, or at least it should be considered wrong in any case. My name is my name, and your name is your name. The U.S. is the United States, an English name, and not something else. Similarly, in English we should follow the same rule. We shoudn't call the country Germany, when they call themselves Deutschland. How do linguists around the world not teach that this is the way it should be?
I also don't buy the lame excuse that we speak our language so we need the words and names to be in our own language. We use lots of words from other languages when taught them, and if we're taught them and use them a few times, it's really no problem. I don't know anyone in English I have ever met, who can't say hors d'艙uvre, or whatever, and if they can't then they learn.
So anyone out there know what the heck is the deal with making up names for people and places when that's NOT their name? It really irks me...lolWhy do languages change names?
If you ever decided to become a citizen of Russia and to get a Russian passport, they would write your name in Cyrillic. Any Russian emigrant becoming a resident or a citizen gets his name written in Latin alphabet the way it's used in the USA. For that purpose a name gets transliterated. The transliteration has nothing to do with the translation, the words look so similar, though. If your name is Michael you will remain Michael, it will be simply written in the different signs: 袦邪泄泻谢, John will be 袛卸芯薪 and Paul will be 袩芯谢.
As for people ';contaminating'; the foreign names, especially the ones from the Bible I would like to pay your attention to the fact The Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Latin, and that's where it all started. Jews didn't use letters for the vowels, and the phonetic system of the Jewish language was significantly different from the Latin one. Romans simply did have a lot of sounds and sound combinations which were normal for Jews, so they simply adapted the exotic words to the opportunities of their language. The New Testament was written in Greek or maybe translated into Greek from Aramaic, so all the names got adapted at least two times before it was translated into Latin. Two millenniums later nobody can say exactly how did ancient Jews, Romans, Greeks etc. pronounced their words, and even in modern Hebrew, so carefully reconstructed by the oldest patterns, some things are just guessed then known for sure. Once the Biblical names came into a certain language they became the fact of that very language. Native English speakers pronounce neither own nor imported names the way they did it 500 years ago or a millennium, just like Greeks don't pronounce their own names the way their ancestors did it in the times of Homer or even 700 years ago.
Why do people ';spoil'; foreign names in general? Because each and every language has it's own phonetic system, and the sounds in one language don't have a total equivalent to all sounds in another. There are two sounds ';t'; in Russian (not palatalized t and the palatalized t), and none of them sounds like the English ';t';, even if it's recognizable as ';t';. You can't pronounce Chines, Polish or French names absolutely the same way the native speakers do unless you perfectly know these languages. Why? Because your mouth, tongue and throat is nothing else but a collection of organs and muscles trained a certain way when you were a small child. You learn which muscles to use more, which less, you get used to certain movements of your vocal tract which represent the widespread sound combinations in your language. It means you've got your habits and changing them is as easy as suddenly beginning writing with a foot instead of a hand.
All possible conscious sounds were researched and classified by linguists, and that's how the International Phonetic Alphabet got created - IPA. IPA describes and classifies all sounds depending on the place in a vocal tract they are produced and the manner of a tongue movement needed to pronounce them. No language in the world uses all the sounds mentioned in IPA. It means that any word (whether it's a name or not) adopted by another language will be also adapted to the phonetic system of this language. All sounds and sound combinations absent in a new language will be substituted by the ones which are the closest to the original, but not 100% equal sounds.Why do languages change names?
Languages don't ';change names';. They EVOLVE.
You have a problem with the fact that it's Michael in English, but Miguel in Spanish?
Is it a problem for you that it's a table in English, but mesa in Spanish?
Does it bother you AT ALL, that all names have their original forms in, like, Hebrew (which, btw, is Ivrit in...well...Ivrit), which evolved into Latin, etc.?
Just, btw, do you have a problem with the fact that cuneiform evolved into Phonecian, which evolved into the Greek alphabet, which evolved into the Latin one?
Or do you want to control that the dinosaurs evolved into birds?
Sorry you don't LIKE the way the world and Language works.
But, you know, no one asked YOU to help decide these things.
Aren't you arrogant?
And, for that matter, you seem to be very Anglo-centric, ';they changed Peter into Pedro';. THEY didn't change ANYTHING. It evolved, and from Hebrew, not English.
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