I don't know about you, but I've been having a bit of a mini-controversy between my royalist friends and myself over whether to anglicize royal names. They had no idea who I was talking about when I brought up John Charles of Spain. I always anglicize, since it makes it easier to compare monarchs with different names in different countries, like HRE Charles V, who was also Karl, Carl and Carlos. Is it more appropriate to use their name as is, or can we anglicize it?
I think it's a big sign of arrogance, ignorance and just plain lazyness to not use the name a person is been given by their parents. No matter if there is a version of the name in another language. It's just a VERSION and not a TRANSLATION. They origin from the same source but they are NOT the same. I don't care if it's "easier" to translate a name into the current countries version. It's still the wrong name.
I always hate, hate, hate it when I read spanish websites where they write about "Guillermo & Catalina", "Isabel II & Felipe", "Carlos Gustavo", "Carlos Felipe", "Magdalena", "Carlota", "Carolina", "Estefania", "Beatriz". Those are not their names. So why use them?
It's just like they are not "Wilhelm & Katharina", "Heinrich", "Johannes Karl", "Mechthild-Margarethe"(germanized) or "Charles Philip", "Madeline" (which btw is used here in the forum very often and just isn't right, just like FrederiCk isn't right, but Frederik), "John Charles" (anglicized).
Has anyone even recognized all of them? No? Have you recognized them, wanderer? If not you know how it would be for every non-english-speaking user around here if we suddenly start changing names around just so you would have it easier.
Because it's not easier. It's confusing. I bet it's even confusing for native english speaking people.
So long story short: No, names shouldn't be anglicized, germanized, spanish-cized or russia-cized (if the last two words even exist
) or whatever-cized. Names CAN NEVER be translated or somewhat-cized in my opinion. That's just not right.