This is slightly off-topic, but I think many of the comments on this thread would be enlightened by a little reminder: proper names were always translated whene

This is slightly off-topic, but I think many of the comments on this thread would be enlightened by a little reminder: proper names were always translated whenever you crossed a language border well into the 20th century. Eleanor of Aquitaine was "Aliénor" in Bordeaux and "Eléonore" in Paris. Only with the gradual bureaucratisation of daily life in Europe did this start to change. In some conservative cultural settings, it still holds true: even today Prince Charles is called "Carlos" in Spain or Portugal. Living in France, I much rather have people pronounce the French variant of my name, purely because it flows better and even sounds closer to the native version than their attempts at reading a foreign ortograph. I am always surprised with how punctilious people from the Americas are with the about spellings and variants of their names, although I understand where they're coming from. In my head, John and Giovanni are still the same name, and any made up variants are just misspellings.