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Comment by throw0101a | Hacker News Reader

> French seems like the language which has quite a bit of names either translates or transliterated into other languages -perhaps due to proximity as well as influence.

Any name of a (Catholic) saint would probably have mappings to other languages. (The Jesuits got around. :)

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I've been burned by this. In Quebec my name is pronounced the same, but there is an obvious spelling difference between the Anglo and French spellings, e.g. Henry vs Henri.

They know you're Anglo before you show up. Which is a problem because they wanted a native French speaker for the role.

That’s true, but they won’t all be commonly used as names everywhere. Jesús is a common Spanish name, but totally nonexistent in English and French as far as I’m aware. María too is way more common than “Mary” in English (that is a real English name, but AFAICT it’s pretty rare in the last few generations).

> That’s true, but they won’t all be commonly used as names everywhere.

Meanwhile "Fatima" has an interesting split between Muslim use and Catholic use:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatima_(given_name)

(I had a good (Portugese) childhood friend with that name; still sometimes manage to keep in touch.)

Huh, interesting the uptake by Catholics was greatly due to a Marian apparition in the town of Fatima, Portugal.

FWIW “Mary” is sort of the stereotypical female name here in Ireland, though I see from looking at the stats that its use has dropped off a good bit (#92 in girls names last year). I’d bet that drop-off is precisely because it’s seen as a very common old-fashioned name redolent of pre-90s world which modern Ireland has a very complex relationship with.

> > Any name of a (Catholic) saint would probably have mappings to other languages

> Jesús is a common Spanish name, but totally nonexistent in English and French as far as I’m aware.

Jesus is not a saint.

> María too is way more common than “Mary” in English (that is a real English name, but AFAICT it’s pretty rare in the last few generations).

Mary is the most common female name in the US, but, José and María are by far more common first names in many parts of the Spanish-speaking world than Joseph and Mary in the English world, to the extent that often people who have them as their first name use their middle name as their common name, not their first name.

> Jesus is not a saint.

Good to know, but the overall point is the same, I think. He was a person who is (obviously) very important to Catholicism, and therefore the name has an equivalent in every widely-used language.

Jesus is a bit of a special case, though right? A etymologically deeper translation into English is "Joshua", which is more numerous in English.

Mary used to be an _incredibly_ popular name in Catholic European countries. Notably, two consecutive presidents of Ireland were called Mary! Definitely less common now, but weirdly universal in the 50s.

Probably common among Americans who ethnically identify as Irish-American too, but since the mass migration of Irish people to the US was more than a century ago, that is increasingly rare. My grandmother is named Mary, though.

Almost every successful Irish female politician was called Mary, for a really long time.

Well, almost every woman of their generation in Ireland was called Mary, so it's not that surprising :)

> María too is way more common than “Mary” in English (that is a real English name, but AFAICT it’s pretty rare in the last few generations).

I think thats partly because Maria itself has been quite popular in English recently. Marie is also quite well accepted as an English name even if it's technically not.

I used the bible to translate my dutch name “Joris” to “George” for when I’m in the USA.

Except "Jarlath"

We have “Iarlaith” in Irish which I believe is cognate with it.

I think that was the original, and Jarlath is a transliteration. It's sufficiently rare in English that I think it's fair to call it "not an English name".

Irenaeus. Polycarp.

Ah that makes total sense now that you mention it.

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