zlacker

>>notok+(OP)
There's an analogous problem for Russians, and presumably folks from other Slavic-language countries. Our last names are gendered; if Ivan Kuznetsov marries Elena, her last name becomes Kuznetsova. (And their children would have gendered last names, too - little Borya Kuznetsov and little Masha Kuznetsova.)

So Russian families who move to America have a choice - either deal with people and systems who assume that married couples, and parents/children all have the same last name and hit roadblocks when that expectation does not match reality, or change one partner's last name to match the other's.

But that second option has problems too, because that name change doesn't retroactively apply in Russia - so now you might have American documents that say you're a Elena Kuznetsov, but your Russian documents say that you're Elena Kuznetsova - so any legal dealings that involve the two countries (like, say, traveling) become significantly more complicated because you need to prove that the two names actually point to the same person.

At least middle names aren't a big issue - patronymics mean something in Russia, but here in America it's just a string you pop into the "middle name" field, and maybe you get asked what it means, and get to teach someone what patronymic means.

>>pavel_+Yb
As a related issue, some Slavic language countries require foreign documents to be transliterated into the Cyrillic alphabet, which doesn't contain exact equivalents for certain English alphabet letters. They usually end up using the closest phonetic equivalent but this often causes bureaucratic hassles.

>>nradov+Ug
Now I'm trying to figure out how one would write out Matthew in Cyrillic, which has two phonemes that are as much of a nightmare for Russian-speakers as "ы" and "р" are for English-speakers. "Мэтью", maybe?

>>pavel_+qi
Do you go with the phonetic option, or do you just use the Cyrillic for the name of the writer of the Gospel?

(It's a more general question, too, is John Juan when he's in Mexico?)

>>bombca+Wn
> is John Juan when he's in Mexico?

For the biblical Jesus, the situation is even worse. His name was probably originally יֵשׁוּעַ, and should therefore have been Yeshua to us users of the modern day Latin alphabet. But instead his name was adapted to Greek linguistic conventions as Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoûs), and from there transliterated into Jesus.

>>Quantu+Br
So is Joshua Jesus when he's in Mexico?

>>noduer+yB
Probably he’d be Josué. But in Greece, he’d be Ιησούς (Jesus). Beginning with the Vulgate¹, there was a distinction between the two names in Biblical texts that is carried over into most modern contexts (although I would note that Russian follows Greek in preferring then name Иисус (Jesus) for Joshua the prophet and I’m guessing that this in general follows the Catholic/Orthodox split (Croatian uses Jošua while Serbian Исус lending support to my hypothesis.²

⸻

1. Or maybe the Vetus Latina, I can’t claim enough authority over early Biblical translations to say with any certainty. And perhaps some other non-Western translation would have priority in making the Joshua/Jesus distinction.

2. My grand strategy for making these sorts of cross-lingual comparisons is to use the “other projects” links from Wikipedia which is also a great way of getting more accurate translations for somewhat niche terminology than machine translation or dictionaries can offer.